Congress vacated the capital city late last week for its
traditional August recess. President Bush headed Tuesday to
Crawford, Texas, and the groaning commenced immediately.
Posters Jim VandeHei and Peter Baker could scarcely
contain their disdain yesterday for the hot, bleak environs of the
Western White House (as chronicled in James Rosen’s piece,
“Covering Crawford,” in the July/August American
Spectator). The main thrust of their article was the statistic
(some could call it a complaint) that Bush, in his fifth year as
president, will already have spent more time on vacation than any
previous president.
Such griping should make true conservatives nostalgic for the
Calvin Coolidge approach to the presidency, or at least a part-time
Congress. State houses around the country that only convene
periodically understand a basic truth: legislators are dangerous
with too much time on their hands. In my home state of Montana, the
state legislature meets for about four months every two years. Then
they do something revolutionary: go back to work at real jobs. When
there’s a genuine necessity for immediate action, they vote to meet
and consider legislation. Now governing America’s a much larger
task than tending Big Sky Country, but Lamar Alexander was on to
something when he proposed a part-time legislature.
Take President Bush’s successes these last two weeks. This “lame
duck” has overseen the confirmation of Karen Hughes for her new
State Department position and Christopher Cox as the new chairman
of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Other recent successes
included passage of the highway and energy bills, John Bolton’s
recess appointment to Turtle Bay, a warm reception for his Supreme
Court nominee, and a virtual guarantee that the firearms
manufacturers liability shield will reach his desk.
Given this administration’s first-term spending and government
growth, it isn’t surprising that much of this progress comes with a
huge price tag. To be fair, Congress shares responsibility for the
heaps of pork spending contained in the highway and energy bills.
But while that branch of government can point fingers at each
other, President Bush alone chose not to exercise his veto.
Though the hundreds of pages of new pork and bureaucracy can be
daunting for your average citizen, Citizens Against Government
Waste has nicely distilled them. In addition to rather cheap,
innocuous renamings such as the “Tip O’Neill Tunnel,” the “Daniel
Patrick Moynihan Interstate Highway,” and the “Richard Nixon
Parkway,” pork projects for the powerful found their way into the
highway bill. Highway bill sponsor Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) was
rewarded with a $230 million bridge to serve the 50 residents of
Gravina Island, Alaska. As one commentator quipped, at that price
each resident could afford his own LearJet. The first phase of
regional trail development in Oregon will cost $5 million.
Calexico, California, will enjoy a new bike path and public park
space to the tune of $4 million. In fact, a tabulation of a small
sample of bike path projects alone turned up over $50 million in
appropriations. Other projects of crucial national interest include
$12 million to modify a San Jose interchange, $400,000 to rehab
Syracuse’s Erie Canal Museum, and over $4 million for “intermodal
parking structures” in St. Charles, Illinois.
The 1,725-page energy bill also spared no expense, including
$14.5 billion in subsidies and $66 billion in other authorizations.
It doubled the quota for ethanol use in gasoline, a notoriously
inefficient agricultural subsidy. The bill earmarked almost $2
billion for hydrogen vehicle research and development, toward which
the private sector is already racing. The Energy Department will
oversee $1.8 billion for clean coal technology development.
Unfortunately, even during the August recess taxpayers’ money
isn’t safe. Lawmakers don’t return to sit out the heat on the porch
with a glass of cold lemonade. They’re listening to constituents’
demands for new projects, which they’ll insert into the first
appropriations bill that looks like it could use a few hundred more
pages. And President Bush will likely sign it, all smiles and
everyone patting everyone else on the back.
