When he was running for president, Barack Obama promised to fight wasteful “earmarks” — costly and often unconstitutional home-state projects that lawmakers attach to legislation in Congress to buy support among constituents.
“We need earmark reform,” then-Sen. Obama said. “And when I’m president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.”
But we still are.
One member of Congress — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. — requested $5 million to transform the officers club at the Presidio, a former military installation in San Francisco, into a tourist information center and exhibition space. Not even the Defense Department requested the money for the facility, which is now part of the National Park Service. Yet the funding is in the defense appropriations bill recently approved by Congress. In fact, it is part of $4.2 billion worth of earmarks and pork-barrel spending in the bill.
It seems hardly a coincidence that the Presidio is in the congressional district represented by Speaker Pelosi and that the renovations will boost her popularity.
“It is the epitome of what a pork-barrel project is,” David Williams, of Citizens Against Government Waste, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “If this were a project that was meritorious, then why didn’t the Pentagon request it?”
So much for making sure Congress is “not spending money unwisely.”