Congress and Mark Souder do NOT get it

It is not often that I agree with President Bush. President Bush has found his veto pen and has started trying to restore a little fiscal sanity in Washington D.C. It is too little, too late; however, at least he has decided to try and cut a small amount of spending.

His most recent veto is of the proposed WRDA (Water Resources Development Act.)

A little history is needed to analyze this bill.

The WRDA is a bill that used to be passed each year and provided a list of projects (often earmarks) that the Federal Government will spend money on. Many of these projects involve rivers, wetlands, and flooding.

From 1997 – 2000 the WRDA was passed once per year. The average Bill was for 1.71 Billion dollars.

In 2000 President Clinton took exception to the size of the WRDA Bill when it was a “measly” 1.376 Billion dollars.

Since 2000 a WRDA bill has not been signed into law. This has to be blamed on the Republican controlled Congress and Senate in 2001-2006.

This has caused a large backlog of projects to build up. If you adjusted for inflation one would expect the 2007 WRDA to be 14.5 billion dollars since it is a bill covering 2001 – 2007.

The Democrat controlled House came up with a bill costing 15 billion and the Democrat controlled senate came up with a bill costing 14 billion. Once everything is considered this spending is in line with past spending.

So the bill was discussed in a committee between the two and it grew to 23 billion dollars. This is a completely absurd figure and one that no fiscal conservative could support since we are already running a sizable budget deficit and we have large fiscal problems (Medicare and Social Security) looming in the next few decades.

Believe it or not; this bill has broad bi-partisan support and easily passed both Houses this year.

President Bush wisely vetoed it; the House over-rode his veto yesterday and the Senate over-rode his veto today. Almost every Democrat voted to over-ride the veto AND a MAJORITY of Big Government Republicans voted to over-ride the veto as well!

Mark Sounder (R) is our Representative. He is defending the Bill and voted with Nancy Pelosi yet again. You can read his comments in the JG:
http://www.journalgazette.net/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071106/NEWS03/711060329/1002/LOCAL

Mark Souder is a big government Republican if I ever saw one. He consistently votes for larger government and is proud of it.

Do any of the readers of this blog remember the negative attack adds Congressman Souder ran against Tom Hayhurst where he said that Tom Hayhurst would vote with Nancy Pelosi?

The bill has a grand total of 7 million dollars that will be spent in Mark Souder’s Congressional District. That is why he supports the Bill…

Mark Souder needs to take a refresher course in math!

Lets look at this, if you divide 23 billion (Total cost of the Bill) by 7 million that results in .0304347%.

There are 435 Congressional Districts in the US. That means that if the money in the WRDA were split evenly among all of the Congressional Districts each District would get .229885% of the money.

So we are getting 13.24% as much as we should if the money were split evenly.

Projects like this should be funded by local Government and not the Federal government.

Mark Souder needs to be voted out of office in 2008. I am sick and tired of him voting for larger and larger government.

Mike Sylvester