That’s Congressman Steve Kagen, D-WI-8, standing next to a gentleman from the Fox River Navigational Authority and Congressman Jim Oberstar, D-MN-8. After an official tour of the Fox River area with Congressman Oberstar, who chairs the House Transportation Committee, on which Kagen serves, there was a separate campaign fundraiser with Kagen and Oberstar.
The same day that Rep. Kagen was towtowing to Chairman Oberstar, and using him to raise money from the road builders, I got an email from Citizens Against Government Waste. CAGW is a highly respected outfit out in D.C. that fights against pork, earmarks, and other wasteful government spending by members of both parties.
The email announced that Chairman Oberstar had been designated the August “Porker of the Month.”
Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today named House Transportation Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.) Porker of the Month for August, 2007. In the wake of the bridge collapse in the congressman’s home state in which at least nine people were killed, Chairman Oberstar’s immediate reaction was to propose a “temporary” 5 cent increase in the gas tax to raise $25 billion within three years for a new bridge trust fund. …
The 2005 highway bill contained $2 billion annually for bridge reconstruction. During its markup of the bill, the House Transportation Committee considered increasing that figure to $3 billion a year. The committee not only failed to include the higher level of bridge repair funding, it opened the door for members of Congress to stuff the bill with nearly 6,500 pork-barrel projects worth more than $24 billion, about the same amount now being sought by Rep. Oberstar with his proposed tax increase.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported recently that Rep. Oberstar is the second-greatest transportation porker in the House:
“As part of a spiking trend of congressional ‘earmarks,’ legislators are wrapping up a $284 billion transportation bill with more than 4,100 special projects selected by members of Congress themselves. One of the principal beneficiaries is Rep. Jim Oberstar, the longest-serving House member in Minnesota history and the ranking Democrat on the House Transportation Committee. Under a version of the bill passed recently by the House, Oberstar would claim $151.6 million in special projects – half the state’s total of $302 million in earmarked funds. It’s the second-largest haul of any member of Congress, after Committee Chairman Don Young, R-Alaska. Young’s district is his entire state.”
In an October 2006 press release, Steve Kagen promised he would “end all pork-barrel projects.†His campaign website promises to “free our government from the influence of political insiders and corporate special interests.” But when he has the opportunity to raise campaign cash from an interest group by featuring the man who hands out the pork to that interest group, he has no problem doing so.
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MN has not raised the gas tax since 1988. As a result they never meet the minimum funding requirement to receive the 4-1 federal transportation match. Oberstar is just trying to come up an emergency solution to start to pay for MN, and the rest of the country’s, underfunded infrastructure.
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