Posted 9:03 PM by steve

To all those (and here) who have invested effort and attention on the Coburn/Obama bill which would create an Internet-based searchable database for the federal budget, I regret to say that I think you have been wasting your time.... there's no way this will do anything to further your goal of reducing government spending....

No Congressman or Senator is going to be deterred from sending as much money to their favorite causes simply because it will show up on some report somewhere. Keep in mind that it's only pork if it's being spent in someone else's district. Money spent in-state/in-district is necessary spending to boost the economy, provide for critical infrastructure or something else that is just as high and mighty. Stevens and Byrd, just to name two, don't care if voters outside Alaska and West Virginia learn or care about what they're doing... and, in the giant 'you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours', very few Senators and/or Congressmen will ever vote to scrap someone else's project... for the simple reason that they don't want their projects scrapped in return.

Also, very few people care enough to even access such a database. Fewer care enough to actually try and do something about it. Yes, I know, you all have blogs and will post long and hard... but, for the most part, blogs are easily ignored. We think that we count for more than we do.

And the third reason is that, with so much riding on a Congressman being able to send federal money to his or her favorite causes, they will find a way to disguise their spending as something other that what would show up on the database. Remember the reforms where spending was supposed to be paid for by either tax hikes or cuts in other spending? Congress simply did an end-around and basically ignored the rules.

So you all might have a little victory... but in the long run, it won't matter a whit. Congress is laughing at you... and will continue to do so.

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