The federal government has been expanding for decades. They spend trillions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars on their political pet projects.
And this RINO is under fire after being exposed for picking Americans’ pockets.
“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program” said Nobel Laureate Economist Milton Friedman.
Yet even he couldn’t have predicted just how bloated the government in the United States would get.
Thanks to COVID, trillions upon trillions of dollars were spent like there was no tomorrow, sending inflation skyrocketing.
All of this spending has done little to help the average American. The politicians are more concerned with buying votes.
And the government is at it again with their latest multi-trillion dollar spending bill.
In the $1.7 trillion omnibus funding measure, outgoing Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chair Richard Shelby (R-AL) sneaked $656 million in earmarks.
The $1.7 trillion, 4,155-page omnibus budget package was introduced by congressional leaders around 1:30 a.m. ET, leaving members little time to consider its consequences.
While the package contains several obvious important reforms, lawmakers also slipped in difficult-to-find earmarks. Many legislators, such as Shelby, are retiring and will face few electoral consequences for supporting a measure that has numerous special interest exemptions and raises the budget.
Shelby, the long-serving Senate Republican appropriations leader, wielded disproportionate power in the development of the massive law. The following are the earmarks he included in the bill:
- $13 million for the Abbeville Municipal Airport Runway Extension
- $26 million for the Tuscaloosa National Airport (TCL) Runway Extension
- $100 million for the Woosley Finnell Bridge
- $200 million for the Alabama State Port Authority Intermodal and Terminal Expansion
- $50 million for a Revolving Loan Fund to benefit the city of Mobile, Alabama
- $35 million for the Marion Military Institute
- $45 million for the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa
- $2.6 million for the Deepening Study for Tennessee—Tombigbee Waterway (TTWW), AL and MS and Black Warrior and Tombigbee (BWT) Rivers; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
- $6.7 million for the Alabama River Lakes, AL; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
- $356 million for the Apalachicola, Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers, GA, AL & FL; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
- $7.25 million for the Black Warrior & Tombigbee Rivers (BWT), AL; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
- $7 million for the Dauphin Island Bay, AL; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
- $250,000 for the Jim Woodruff Lock and Dam, Lake Seminole, FL, AL & GA; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
- $2.25 million for The University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, AL, for a permanent endowment fund to support the recruitment and retention of exceptional faculty in science and engineering.
- $35 million for the Spring Hill College, AL, for facilities and equipment
- $76 million for the UAB Heersink School of Medicine, AL, for facilities and equipment
- $50 million for the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, AL, for a permanent endowment fund to support the recruitment and retention of exceptional faculty in science and engineering.
The omnibus bill also names the FBI’s Redstone Arsenal facility in Alabama the “Richard Shelby Center for Innovation and Advanced Training.”
Earmarks were labeled a “inherently wasteful spending practice that is prone to serious abuse” by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) and 18 other Senate Republicans last year.
In contrast, Shelby said, “I’ll be gone. I’ll be cutting the grass and running errands for my wife. They’d start all over. I wouldn’t get anything,” referring to what might happen if the omnibus bill is not passed during the current lame duck session.
Stay tuned to the Federalist Wire.
