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Special projects, the imfamous "pork barrel legislation', should not be attached to other legitimate bills just to get a bill passed. First, it is a form of blackmail where one side (or representative) says they won't vote for a bill unless they personally get their special project passed. Many times these projects are total wastes of money, like the 'Bridge to Nowhere' which was featured on the news. The bridge would serve a small island on the Alaskan coast with a population of less than 9000. The people don't like waiting 15 to 30 minutes for the ferry to the local airport, so it will cost millions of taxpayers' funds to build a bridge(over $320 million was recently earmarked in the senate before $75 million was redirected to New Orleans for repairs to a bridge damaged by hurricane Katrina). You can google 'bridge to nowhere' for the whole story.I also saw $2 million appropriated for a thimble museum once.

The thing is, this has become status quo, the way of life in Washington. There are millions of dollars being wasted to buy votes. There is a segment on ABC news that regularly features poor governmental financial decisions called 'It's your money'. It also shows which senators and congrees people are the best at procuring funds. It is appalling that in this day and age, with so many legitimate projects and services needing funding (like the gulf coast clean-up, social security, medicare, education), we are wasting taxpayers'money on this sort of thing.

I think it's time to stop piggy-backing wasteful spending on legitimate laws and burying them so deep you need a watchdog to find them.

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