Your Recurring Campaign Contribution

One issue that the current debate over pork projects has brought to the fore is how they essentially are used as campaign funds. It's a lot of money; CAGW noted about $16.5 billion in earmarks for 2010. Understandably, some folks don't like this; if Steve doesn't like his senator, he probably doesn't like that his senator can use the tax money taken from Steve to fund projects that are often unnecessary to keep key constituencies voting for that senator.

What many people don't fully realize, however, is how this injustice permeates our current system of taxation and appropriation. Let me give you a couple recent examples.

Let's start with Harry Reid's idea back in October to give every recipient of Social Security benefits (all 52 million of them) a $250 bonus That's $14.5 billion right there. Most of them could almost certainly use it; they haven't had a cost of living increase in years. I'm not a fan of social security, but that's not the problem; it's the strategy that disgusted me. It wasn't news to Reid that seniors wanted an increase. He'd just had two years of Democratic House and Senate majorities, along with a Democratic executive. If he'd wanted to pass this measure, he'd almost certainly have been able to do it anytime since 2008.

However, it wasn't until October of 2010 that he offered to vote on it, and then he wanted to vote on it AFTER the November elections. Now why the heck would he do that? It certainly doesn't make sense if his priority was to actually accomplish the payment; it is far more unlikely that it will pass now that Republicans have gained a majority in the House. If, on the other hand, his priority was to get himself and other Democrats re-elected, it makes perfect sense. Republicans were far more likely to oppose such a measure, so Reid dangled the $250 in front of seniors in order to get them to vote Democrat.

Here's another example in the news this morning. Al Gore, in a series of surprisingly frank statements, essentially admitted that the reason he supported subsidies (running about $6 billion a year) of corn ethanol wasn't entirely because he believed that it was in the best interests of the country.

"One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president."

Got that? Corn ethanol was a bad idea, but hey, folks, I was about to run for president so I needed votes in Iowa, why not throw a few billion in that direction?

Pork projects aren't the half of it. As long as your government can take your money without your consent, this will be a problem.