Time to Give Back our Transportation Pork?

Ronald Utt, a Falmouth resident and scholar with the Heritage Foundation, makes the case for Virginians to return some half-billion dollars in 152 different transportation-funding earmarks to help the nation pay for the reconstruction of areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina. The recently enacted federal transportation package was crammed with about $25 billion in earmarks nationally. Cancelling those projects would go a long way to paying for disaster relief, suggests Utt in a column in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star.

Wrote Utt:

Virginia's congressional delegation willfully diverted more than half a billion dollars to 152 earmarks, among which are new horse-riding trails in the High Knob area of Jefferson National Forest, a new forest service facility on the Virginia Creeper Trail, restoration of the historic Hillman House in St. Paul, the Blue Ridge Music Center, the Rocky Knob Heritage Center, historic preservation of the Bristol Train Station, water mill preservation at White's Mill Trail, a river walk in Pound, a new entryway for James Madison's Montpelier, and a streetscape for Staunton.

Also troubling is the diversion of as much as $6 million from VDOT to the U.S. National Park Service--whose budget this year will total more than $2.3 billion. Why not fund it from there?

The idea of giving up the roundabouts on U.S. Route 50 really hurts me, but the fiscal profligacy in Washington, D.C. hurts me even more. I think Utt has a good point. We should give the earmarks back.