Does fiscal conservatism stop at the water’s edge? It’s a
question worth pondering because Senator John McCain is a hawk
who is also rightly skeptical of too much federal spending.
During his successful bid to capture the Republican nomination
for president, McCain regularly railed against Alaska’s “bridges
to nowhere.” Funding for these bridges had been quietly tucked
into the 2006 transportation bill by Alaska Senator Ted Stevens,
and would have remained relatively uncontroversial except that
anti-pork crusader (and great vice presidential material!)
Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn made the bridges exhibits A an B in
his case that Washington Just Doesn’t Get It.
The bridges would have connected the town of Ketchikan to Gravina
Island (home to about 50 people, i.e., nowhere) and given
Anchorage residents easier access to the northern wetlands.
Initial cost to the federal government? $453 million. Cost for
later wetlands bridge expansion? Almost $2 billion. Watching
Stevens pitch a fit and threaten to resign from the Senate when
Coburn made an issue of it? Priceless.
McCain made an issue of the bridges because he doesn’t like
earmark spending and because voters could readily agree that this
was too much. Here was a pitch perfect example of the federal
government literally sinking taxpayer dollars into projects that
the state would never dole out for on its own.
It was a symbol of all that is wrong with our out-of-control
spending, on everything from pet projects to entitlements to war
making.
HOLD ON, you might say of that last item. That’s
stealing a base. But is it?
A large number of voters who voted for McCain in the Republican
primary were anti-war. According to exit polls, 42 percent of
anti-war voters who voted in the New Hampshire Republican primary
cast ballots for the Arizona senator. That’s an awfully high
percentage. They must have been attracted to something
in McCain’s message.
That something was likely his admirable advocacy of spending
restraint. He voted against not only nickel-and-dime (well,
billions of nickels and dimes) pork barrel spending but also the
expansion of Medicare prescription drug coverage, the most costly
domestic piece of legislation that Bush signed into law.
War costs money too. Round the bill for the bridges to nowhere
that so incensed McCain up to $500 million. Our occupation of
Iraq, which often seems to be getting nowhere, is costing north
of $10 billion a month. That sum could finance the
construction of 40 superfluous bridges this month and 480 bridges
in a year.
We hasten to add that this is not a brief to bring home the
troops and rev up road construction per se. Rather, it’s
a tool readers can use to put these things in perspective.
Pentagon pencil sharpeners insist that if we stay in Iraq long
enough with a force of about 130,000 troops they might be able to
get costs down to $8 billion a month — or 32 bridges. That
figure is too optimistic because it does not include many costs,
including lifetime disability payments for thousands of wounded
and maimed soldiers. So tack on at least a bridge a month, maybe
two.
MOST IRAQ WAR HAWKS insist that this is a price worth paying,
though they rarely quantify it. McCain would see those costs and
raise them substantially. He would expand the active duty
military and has hinted that there are more wars on the horizon,
perhaps during his presidency.
All this would cost a lot of money. How much? More than a
President McCain could save with a judicious use of his veto pen.
Though he claims he can restrain Congress, there are limits to
what any president can accomplish. Certain bills simply have to
be signed and the senators and representatives can override
vetoes, especially if most members’ pet pork projects are
threatened.
What this means is that there are probably more bridges to
nowhere in the future. And that these monuments to legislative
hubris will continue to be a good way to measure how much
treasure America is willing to give up to salvage something from
its long occupation of Iraq.
