Alaskan Pol: "It's My Money!"

What is it with Republicans from Alaska? These guys have raped the U.S. Treasury for hundreds of millions of dollars for projects designed only to get them reelected. And when they're challenged, they take it pretty personally. After all, it's their money:

Rep. Don Young attacked his fellow Republicans on the House floor Wednesday, as he defended education funds allocated to his home-state of Alaska.

"You want my money, my money," Young stridently declared before warning conservatives that, "Those who bite me will be bitten back."

Young took extreme exception to an amendment by Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) to strike money in a spending bill for native Alaskan and Hawaiian educational programs.

Conservatives have stoked the ire of their fellow Republicans for years by challenging federal spending, both broadly and on specific projects. But it's rare that their GOP colleagues express that displeasure openly on the floor.

During his brief tirade Wednesday, Young suggested Republicans lost their majority because Garrett, whom he did not specifically name, and others had challenged spending during the GOP's tenure. He also had disparaging things to say about the great state of New Jersey - home to The Sopranos and Bon Jovi.

And lest we forget, Young, who used to chair the House Transportation Committee, is responsible for the so-called "Bridge to Nowhere," a proposed span connecting Ketchikan, Alaska, with the tiny island of Gravina that would have cost $315 million – and eventually came to symbolize profligate spending under Republican rule.

Oh, and he has spent more than $250,000 on legal fees so far this year at the same time that federal investigators probe some of his campaign's biggest contributors.

Want to balance the budget? Get Don Young and Ted Stevens out of Congress.