Congress Porks Up Waterways Bill

by Timothy P. Carney - October 19th, 2007 - The Examiner

The Senate recently passed a bill authorizing money for the Army Corps of Engineers with a price tag of about $14 billion. The House version of the Water Resources Development Act passed at $15 billion. In a conference committee, lawmakers from both chambers hammered out the differences, and in the end came to a compromise: $23 billion.

What concerns me is the possibility that George W. Bush knew that this bill was so filled with pork benefiting both the Democrat and Republican sides of the aisle that he did not seriously expect to stop the waste. He anticipated that his veto would be overridden. He may have simply been posturing. It is certainly not consistent with his previous practice of approving anything that increases government size and waste.

This is not the Republican philosophy. It is not what we elected Bush to do. He has deceived the Republican party base about what he stood for. Unfortunately he is a part of the "elite" wing of the Republican Party that is rapidly promoting Bush's new philosophy of "big government conservatives". That is what they call "compassionate conservative" but not what they really mean. They really mean corporate socialism. There is a war in the Republican Party today between those who support free enterprise (which really means small business) and those who support "capitalism" (which really means big corporations).

There is no real way we can represent both. The Republican Party needs to decide whether they support free enterprise or "capitalism". Since today the democrat party is the true party representing big business, Republicans can't really get their support. Their money goes to the democrats. However we have not yet gotten the message out that big business has sold out the Republican Party. They are still registered Republican but they give their money to the democrats. Small business has not yet caught on that they cannot win by playing the same game.

Today, neither party represents the interests of those who are willing to embrace free enterprise and the concept of competition that comes with it. A few more years with neither party representing the interests of free enterprise will leave our current economic system in shambles and our government as corrupt as any in the world.