Citizen Against Government Waste just released their 2006 Congressional Pig Book, the non-partisan watchdog group’s latest installment of pork-barrel spending. The following is from their report:
The 2006 Congressional Pig Book is the latest installment of Citizens Against Government Waste’s (CAGW) 16-year exposé of pork-barrel spending. This year’s list includes: $13,500,000 for the International Fund for Ireland, which helped finance the World Toilet Summit; $6,435,000 for wood utilization research; $1,000,000 for the Waterfree Urinal Conservation Initiative; and $500,000 for the Sparta Teapot Museum in Sparta, N.C.
I’ve got an idea for “wood utilization”… and it’s tied very closely to the United Armenian Guitar Fund. [NOTE: I'm Armenian and I play guitar]
For as much as our political system is better than others, I still shake my head most of the time. It pains my mind to comprehend how obvious this all is… that our self-serving “representitives” (please hold all laughter to the end) use our dollars to keep their careers moving, rather than using their careers toward us keeping more of our dollars. And it isn’t just one political party who’s to blame… they all graduated from sheister-school (well, the vast majority of them anyway).
When we ram through a gigantic bill, spending hundreds of billions of taxpayer’s dollars with little or no debate because we want to go home for Thanksgiving, we send the message to the American people that we are not serious enough about our jobs. We essentially accomplish little almost all year long because everything requires 60 votes, and then, at the very last minute, we scramble around and throw together a 1,632 page bill like the one before us today.
- John McCain, from his statement on the FY 2005 Omnibus Appropriations Bill
Web designer and developer. Loud discerner. Software engineer and 
04 08 06
Good post Steve. I betcha if politicians didn’t draw a salary some of these issues might go away. If it is their job to help the public via policy implementation and creation, why should they get paid? They are doing it to help humanity aren’t they?! hahahahaha The corruption in government just tans my hide and the spending over stupid stuff is crazy. I will check out the Report by the CAGW, and I don’t know if you saw the CATO report that came out last year about GWB and his spending habits…Uh oh. Say, I cannot find the link and will post it after I found it, but here is the CATO url: http://www.cato.org.
And you are Armenian eh? I figured your last name was from that part of the world. One of our dearest buddies is Armenian and he and his wife had their baby blessed last year. I bring this up because I had never had the privelige of going to an Orthodox Armenian service and the spirit of love was everpresent there. I loved the litergies and the depictions of Christ in the artwork and the people were very warm. We also talked alot about how closely the Orthodox Armenians are with the Coptics. Without rambling too much, you certainly come from a very intriguing and rich heritage. There aren’t too many people i come across who can say they fought one of the first holy wars and so forth:)
Sorry for rambling:)
You are welcome to stop in whenever you like!
I had not read the CATO spending report but I respect much of what I read coming out of there… there’s just something about Liberty that rings correct with me.