http://www.news-miner.com/Stories/0,141 ... 55,00.html


By SAM BISHOP News-Miner Washington Bureau


Friday, October 21, 2005 - WASHINGTON--The U.S. Senate overwhelmingly rejected an attempt to move money for two proposed bridges in Alaska to a bridge in Louisiana wrecked by Hurricane Katrina.

The Senate voted 15-82 Thursday night against an amendment sponsored by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., that would have sent about $125 million to the Twin Spans Bridge over Lake Pontchartrain between New Orleans and Slidell, La.

The money would have come from the $454 million that Alaska's congressional delegation earmarked in an earlier transportation bill for the proposed bridges over Knik Arm near Anchorage and the Tongass Narrows near Ketchikan.

Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, told colleagues before the vote that he would resign if they passed the amendment.

"This concept is a concept every state should think about," he said minutes before the vote. If bridge money can be taken from one state and moved to another, what else will be at risk, he asked.

"In my 37 years I've never seen this," Stevens said.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, also R-Alaska, echoed Stevens' sentiment.

"I don't think anyone in the state of Alaska feels that we should not be contributing," she said. "We don't feel in the state of Alaska that it should be coming entirely from one state, and that's what this amendment does."

Coburn said he introduced the amendment to serve a broader goal.

"The purpose of my amendment doesn't have so much to do with Alaska as it has to do with priorities in our country," he said. "My hope is the American public will see how we're spending money ... and encourage us to spend it more frugally."

With hundreds of billions in debt stacking up, an ongoing war and another hurricane bearing down, "it is time we reassess the priorities we utilize in this body," Coburn said.

In a letter sent to other senators Tuesday, Coburn was more critical of the Alaska bridges. He said his amendment "would transfer funding from a wasteful pork project in Alaska to the much-needed repair and reconstruction of the 'Twin Spans' bridge in Louisiana."

He included a photograph of a wrecked bridge in Louisiana next to a conceptual rendering of the Ketchikan bridge, which he called a "bridge to nowhere."

Murkowski said that phrase, repeated constantly across the country, was unfair.

"It is as if we are legislating by the media here, and we're better than that," she said.

Ketchikan has no room to grow now and the bridge will offer access to "20,000 acres of private, municipal and state lands that can make a huge difference in providing economic opportunity for this area," she said.

"It is a bridge to the future for the people of Ketchikan, Alaska," she said.

The money for the Alaska bridges is currently in a $286 billion, five-year funding bill for transportation projects across the nation. It passed Congress earlier this year and the president signed it into law in August.

Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska and chairman of the House Transportation Committee, secured most of the money for the Alaska bridges, although Stevens and Murkowski also added amendments to increase the totals during House-Senate negotiations over a final version.

The bill debated and passed 93-1 Thursday was the annual spending bill for the Department of Transportation. It normally would not significantly change spending commitments outlined in the five-year plan.

However, a variety of groups and commentators have been encouraging Congress to take some of the money from the five-year plan and send it to the Gulf Coast, which was hit by hurricanes a few weeks after Bush signed the five-year bill into law. The Alaska bridges have become the poster children for the effort.

Young said he wouldn't consider such an idea and said critics could "kiss my ear." The bridges are worthwhile and Alaska, as a young state with relatively few roads, needs and deserves the money, he said.

Because of the way the five-year highway act is structured, Coburn's amendment actually wouldn't have taken all $454 million from Alaska. Much of the money going to the bridges is guaranteed for Alaska by formula.

Removing the earmarks would have eliminated only about $125 million in Alaska money allocated above the formula funds, according to Coburn spokesman John Hart. An earlier estimate of $75 million was incorrect, he said.

"The other money would have been blocked from going to the bridges but re-absorbed into Alaska's other priorities," Hart said.

Stevens, in response to Coburn's amendment, had offered an alternative measure. It said no money from the five-year bill could be spent on any bridge project in the country until the Twin Spans bridge had been fixed. The money for Twin Spans would then come from around the country equally, he said.

The Senate rejected his amendment, 33-61.

Washington, D.C., reporter Sam Bishop can be reached at (202) 662-8721 or sbishop@newsminer.com .

And some people still want the federal government to run healthcare

Ted Stevens is the chair of the Appropriations committee--of course he won't allow any funding from his state to get drained. Silly rabbits.

(BTW, the ranking Democrat on that committee is Daniel Inouye from Hawaii. Guess which two states are on top of per capita pork barrel money?)

i am slowly getting to the point where i want as little fed gov't as possible. Can I be a Liberal/Libertarian/Conservative?

do you have a link or some list to post for that?

http://www.cagw.org/site/PageServer?pag ... igbook2005



But DC's not a state.

I wish I didn't have to chose between being smothered by an inept government and being completely abandoned by government.

How about between federal gov't and local gov't?

I'm a northerner living in the south. How much faith do you think I have in the locals?

Seriously, you can't cut the feds out entirely ... if we only depended on state funds, Alaska wouldn't have any roads at all!

It's your choice to live there.



Of course you can't cut it out entirely, but I'd sure like to see it cut down a lot.

Though, maybe some parts of wild Alaska were meant to be wild.

No. Your are way too smart for that. Just be a chronic whiner like the rest of us.

This proves it: The Senate is a bunch of assholes. I'm all for state's rights, man! Unfortunately my state doesn't like to pay for infrastructure, and would rather pay fees to corporations than pay for roads, prisons and schools.

I'm looking for a politician who wants to re-create Jefferson's dream: a self-sufficient agrarian society where the gov't doesn't tell me what to do. And other stuff too...I can't sum up all my political philosophies right now...I'm at work, and now I'm rambling...sorry...

Radley Balko reports:



Why It's Personal for Lisa Murkowski

Lots of you have sent me this article on Ted Stevens' meltdown yesterday in the Senate. Stevens, who could very well be remembered as the GOP's Dan Rostenkowski, inveighed on the Senate floor against the Coburn Amendment, which would have pulled much of the pork from that damned highway bill for use rebuilding the Gulf Coast. Stevens, who has an airport in Anchorage and about a thousand other landmarks across Alaska named for him, is notoriously corrupt (I'll have more on Stevens next week).

But I want to focus on a passage that comes at the end of the article. It's this one:

Lisa Murkowski, Alaska's junior senator, defended the bridges, saying they were essential to economic development in the state. She says it was - quote - "very difficult to stand here as an Alaskan and not take this personally."

For those of you who don't remember, Lisa Murkowski was apopinted to the U.S Senate by her dad, Frank Murkowski, when he gave up his seat to run for governor, then got to fill it when he was elected. He filled it by appointing his daughter, naturally.

Lisa Murkowski's choice of words ought to come back to haunt her. Because you see, for Lisa Murkowski, it really is personal.

Gravina Island (population: 50) is home to one of those $250 million bridges targeted by Coburn's amendment. Alaska's triumverate of greed -- Rep. Dan Young, Gov. Frank Murkowski, and Sen. Ted Stevens -- all say the bridge to Gravina will spur "development." But much of Gravina is protected wilderness. In fact, just a handful of private citizens own land there. One of them happens to be Nancy Murkowski, wife of the governor, and mother of Senator Lisa Murkowski. Nancy Murkowski owns 33 acres on Gravina, valued at about $225,000. I suspect that valuation will soar once the federally-funded bridge is completed, and what little private land exists on the island begins to be eyed by developers. Oddly enough, the Murkowskis neglected to list their Gravina Island property on the financial diclosure forms requried by state law.

So I guess it shouldn't surprise us that Lisa Murkowski takes the Coburn Amendment so personally. Part of her inheritance is at stake.