For Immediate Release
November 8, 2007 |
Contact: Steve Ellis
202-546-8500 x126 |
Congress Slams Home Water Pork
(pdf version)
Written Statement by Steve Ellis, Vice President of Taxpayers for Common Sense, on the Congressional override of the President’s veto of the Water Resources Development Act of 2007:
The Senate voted to override the President’s veto by a vote of 79-14. Earlier this week, the House of Representatives voted to override the President’s veto by a vote of 361-54. The bill will now become law without the President’s signature.
WRDA 2007 will go down in record books as the most expensive water projects bill ever. But it will also have an asterisk and the stigma of becoming law without the President’s signature. Short on critical agency reforms, but long on projects, lawmakers combined a $14 billion Senate bill with a $15 billion House bill to create a $23 billion behemoth.
The legislation breathed new life into the enormously wasteful $2.2 billion Upper Mississippi River Navigation project, which had been held up after a senior Corps economist blew the whistle on agency officials cooking the books. The legislation had more pork than a Carolina BBQ joint, with millions going to water project slush funds nationwide, millions more for pumping sand on beaches to protect vacation homes and navigation boondoggles like the $130 million Port of Iberia (LA) project.
Since Congress insisted on adding $23 billion worth of projects to the Corps’ existing $58 billion backlog, lawmakers should quickly turn to creating a system to establish priorities for the nation’s water infrastructure spending. The failed levees in New Orleans and the Minneapolis bridge collapse are a vivid demonstration that too much money goes to political projects instead of our nation’s critical infrastructure priorities. |
