Road bill an earmark scandal

The federal transportation bill recently approved by the Senate has correctly been criticized for failing to address priorities, while earmarking funds for home-state pork. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., provides evidence of just how deplorable the situation has become.

The Senate version of the bill, which also includes federal housing appropriations, has 843 earmarks totalling $2.5 billion. That's more than double the extra billion for emergency bridge funding, approved in the wake of the interstate bridge collapse in Minneapolis.

Sen. DeMint's unsuccessful efforts to rid the bill of earmarks provided another indication of the extent to which the Congress is devoted to a process corrupted by parochialism. In a recent statement, the senator offered two examples of outrageous earmarks: $450,000 for the International Peace Garden in Dunseith, N.D., and $500,000 for a minor league ballpark in Billings, Mont.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune recently reported this further evidence of the wasteful earmark culture: The National Mule and Packers Museum in the small California town of Bishop, a pet project of Rep. Howard McKeon, R-Calif., will cost federal taxpayers $50,000. Rep. McKeon's comments to the newspaper are instructive, "One thing we forget is the people in Bishop pay taxes," he said, adding that "they have gotten very little back from the federal government."

Unfortunately, as pork projects are funded, indisputable priorities fail to get necessary support. That was one of the points made in a report from the inspector general of DOT, cited by Sen. DeMint. It found that virtually all transportation earmarks approved in a 10-year period ending in 2005 were made without consulting the normal process of approval at either state or federal level. Indeed, earmarks provide support for projects that otherwise would be ineligible.

Such blatantly inefficient use of transportation funding exacerbates growing traffic problems around the nation. That includes ever-worsening traffic right here in the Lowcountry.

As a front-page story in The Post and Courier reported last week, a new study by the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University found that in 2005, the most recent year for which statistics are available, the Charleston metro area led all other metro areas with populations of less than 500,000 in the nation in the dubious category of "most hours lost per year" in traffic.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, the House version of the transportation bill, approved before the bridge disaster, has more earmarks (1,400) than the Senate bill, but they total somewhat less in cost at $2.2 billion.

Does anyone think that the conference committee will somehow reduce any of those figures as it prepares the final version? If so, we'd like to offer you a chance to buy the Brooklyn Bridge.