Tax and Spend Republicans are kings of pork

Where are all the angry Republicans raising hell about this irresponsible squandering of their precious tax dollars?

When Democrats were in control of Congress until 1994, Republicans routinely accused Democrats of spending like drunken sailors on a Saturday night binge. But now that the Republicans are in control of the cookie jar, look at the results.

-- $277 million in road projects for the district of Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert.

-- $722 million in projects for Kern County, Calif., home of powerful House Ways and Means Chairman Committee Chairman Bill Thomas, nearly $1,000 per person.

-- $550 million for petroleum drilling research in House Majority Leader Tom Delay's home turf in Texas.

-- Rep. Don Young from Alaska, known in certain circles as the "King of Pork," scored big. As chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure he steered $231 million for a bridge near Anchorage called the "bridge to nowhere," and $223 million for another bridge connecting the tiny village of Ketchikan, Alaska, to an island with 50 inhabitants.

As reported by the Washington Post, the highway bill is the most expensive public works legislation in U.S. history, complete with 6,376 earmarked projects. Congress passed transportation and energy bills that busted cost limits established by President Bush. A massive water projects bill authorized spending that would exceed current levels by 173 percent. And let's not even mention the increases in the defense budget, with no end in sight.

It's not for nothing that the Cato Institute has called the GOP the Grand Old Spending Party.

The rest of the piece makes the case against the winner take all system of elections which encourage wasteful pork spending. Read it here.