Levees Not War

The Associated Press and ABC News report that on the same day the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis collapsed (Aug. 2), Bush administration officials announced the White House would veto a $20 billion water-projects bill that the president claimed was “laden with pork-barrel programs.”

Now, nobody approves of wasteful spending-frivolous ‘bridges to nowhere’-but it looks to us like many worthy infrastructure projects are vetoed as pork-barrel spending, just as worthy social programs for health and education are slowly defunded, whittled away, dismissed as ‘patronage’ hand-outs or as inefficient, outdated initiatives that no longer make the grade in the cost-benefit analyses.

If the money’s being spent here in the Homeland, we don’t mind a little pork here and there. Like the sign at Little Richard’s BBQ, we say “Eat mo’ pig.”