Reports
ABC News:
Poring over the mammoth,
$410 billion "omnibus" spending bill released by the House
Appropriations Committee this afternoon, an interesting name
pops up as one of the more prolific earmarkers: Transportation
Secretary Ray LaHood.
The earmark requests were submitted early last year, when
LaHood, R-Ill., served as a member of the House Appropriations
Committee -- long before he could have been thinking about
serving in President Obama's Cabinet.
Members of that committee traditionally dominate the requests
for funding for specific projects. Those requests are made
public by the appropriations committee.
To choose just a few of LaHood's voluminous earmark requests,
which are scattered throughout the documentation posted online:
Research funding for the Midwest Poultry Consortium; medical
equipment funding for Memorial Medical Center in Springfield,
Ill.; construction funds for a cancer research lab at the
University College of Medicine at Peoria; "exhibit design" help
for the Lakeview Museum in Peoria; planetarium equipment for
the Lakeview Museum of Arts and Sciences; "public safety
communications equipment" for the Logan County Sheriff's
Department; equipment for the Lincoln, Ill., Police Department;
research funding for the "National MarketMaker Network" at the
University of Ilinois at Urbana-Champaign; "crop production and
food processing research" in Peoria; biodiesel and E85 storage
tanks and dispensers for the City of Peoria; "green building
design and implementation" at Bradley University; and funding
for the Soybean Disease Biotechnology Center and the Livestock
Genome Sequencing Initiative in Champaign, Ill.
Remind me again why I should be happy there is a Republican
in the Obama Cabinet.
About the Author
Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and the Senior Fellow in International Religious Persecution at the Institute on Religion and Public Policy. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Beyond Good Intentions: A Biblical View of Politics (Crossway).
