Mulshine Is Correct; Where's The "Pork" In The Hurricane Sandy Relief Bill ?

I may not always agree with his opinions but Paul Mulshine of the Star-Ledger, is spot on with this commentary. He sets FOX News and others straight on "all that pork" which is allegedly contained in the Hurricane Sandy relief bill.

There was only one item of unrelated "pork" in the original relief bill, which was taken out before Congress adjourned last week without voting on the on it. The rest of the spending to fix storm damaged federal buildings and replace vehicle are all legitimate storm related items and were rightfully included in the bill:

"A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can put its shoes on." Mark Twain said that more than a century before the internet era. Nowadays, the lies can circle the globe before the truth even puts on its socks.

The lie of which I speak is the assertion that the Hurricane Sandy aid package now before Congress is filled with billions of dollars for projects unrelated to the storm.

This is nonsense. Thanks to the internet, anyone can find the original $60 billion aid package online. Poring through its 73 pages shows line item after line item directly related to Sandy. The one big unrelated item, $150 million for Alaskan fisheries, was taken out of the package before the House adjourned last week without voting on it.

As for the rest of the package, a good example is the proposed federal spending to repair hurricane damage to federal buildings and vehicles. The critics call that pork. But unless Santa Claus or the tooth fairy pays to fix that damage, the federal government’s stuck with the tab.

That is typical of the nonsense you can find on the net about the aid package. Tracking it to its roots is like watching "telephone" — the children’s game in which a whispered comment is passed around a circle of people, emerging at the end as something totally different.

In this case, the children began with a piece on the Heritage Foundation website by Matt Mayer. In the piece, Mayer questions the voting procedure for the bill more than the spending itself. When it comes to spending to mitigate the risk from future storms, for example, Mayer writes, "If the Obama Administration believes that these future projects should be funded, it should place those funding requests in the upcoming budget."

That’s a point on which reasonable people can disagree. But as for the actual expenditures cited by Mayer, they are similar to those Congress enacted 11 days after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005. Mayer calls for some reforms for aid in future storms. But that’s to be decided in the future.

As that Heritage report worked its way through the internet, however, commenters kept citing it as evidence of ever-more-extreme examples of out-of-control spending. By the time the telephone was handed to Fox News, the talking heads were reporting that a third of the money would be spent on non-hurricane-related pork — something Mayer never stated....

Continue reading