President Obama breaks pork-barrel promise

In August President Obama promised to veto any defense bill that contained pork barrel projects.  Last week he broke that promise.  From Fox News:

President Obama pledged in August to cut all pork barrel projects from defense spending, threatening to veto any swollen bills that came across his desk -- a pledge shattered by nearly 2,000 pet projects that have made their way into the defense budget.



"If a project doesn't support our troops, we will not fund it," he said to a meeting of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Phoenix. "If a system doesn't perform, we will terminate it. And if Congress sends me a defense bill loaded with that kind of pork, I will veto it. "


Just last week, Obama broke his promise as he signed into law the 2010 Defense Appropriations Bill -- a $636 billion behemoth loaded with $4.2 billion of pork.


"We should be concerned that we're getting ripped off," said Ryan Alexander, president of the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense.


"The earmarking process is the beginning of figuring out whether or not we're getting ripped off. Absolutely dollars are being directed, not based on the best decision making process."


In all, Congress added in 1,720 pet projects, including:


∙$5 million for a visitors center in San Francisco
∙$23 million for indigent health care in Hawaii
∙$18 million for the Edward Kennedy Policy Institute in Massachusetts
∙$1.6 million to computerize hospital records in Oakland
∙$47 million for anti-drug training centers around the country
∙$20 million for the World War II Museum in Louisiana
∙$3.9 million grant to develop an energy-efficient solar film for buildings
∙$800,000 for minority prostate cancer research
∙$3.6 million for marijuana eradication in Kentucky
∙$2.4 million for handicap access and a sprinkler system at a community club in New York


Lawmakers also added $5 billion for two destroyers, 10 C-17 cargo planes and to develop a jet engine the Pentagon neither wants nor needs. Critics call it classic pork -- projects that may save jobs, but not money.

In terrorism terms, the defense bill is, ironically, a "soft target."  Our representatives know that it must be passed, so they cram everything they can get away with into it, and it passes.

President Obama declared in his speech in Prague that "words must mean something."  I guess it would have been instructive if he had clarified his meaning.  Like "Words must mean something.  Just not what you think."