Transportation Bill Includes North Dakota Peace Garden

In the aftermath of the Minneapolis bridge collapse there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the "failure" of the Bush administration to provide enough funds to fix our failing infrastructure. Of course, as any student of U.S. government knows, all spending must originate in the Congress and based on this story, they're not doing their job:

WASHINGTON — Six weeks after a fatal Minneapolis bridge collapse prompted criticism of federal spending priorities, the Senate approved a transportation and housing bill Wednesday containing at least $2 billion for pet projects that include a North Dakota peace garden, a Montana baseball stadium and a Las Vegas history museum.

That's not the half of it.

Total spending on transportation "earmarks" next year is likely to be about $8 billion, when legislative projects from a previously approved, five-year highway bill are factored in. A newly released report by the Department of Transportation's inspector general identified 8,056 earmarks totaling $8.5 billion in the fiscal year that ended in October, or 13.5% of the Transportation Department's $63 billion spending plan.

THE REPORT: Read the inspector general's report

The inspector general's report found that the vast majority of earmarks — project-specific spending instructions written into bills, usually by lawmakers — were not evaluated on their merits, and that many "low-priority" earmarks often squeezed out more important projects.

The Federal Aviation Administration, for example, had to delay updating high-priority air-traffic control towers in favor of lower priority facilities requested by legislators, the inspector general found.

With all due respect to my friends in North Dakota, I've got to believe that upgrading air-traffic control towers would be a more valuable expenditure of funds than a peace garden. And isn't there already plenty of money in Las Vegas to fund their own history museum?