Theft at the Public Till
so each year they're given increases for inflation and growth of population without Congress even having to vote. Washington isn't a place where the fundamental questions ever get asked. I mean the hard ones, such as "Why the hell are we spending all this money on this project in the first place?" Or asking people, "What would you be willing to do without if you knew you had to pay for it out of your own pocket?" Because, of course, all spending in Washington comes out of the same pocket. Taxpayers just don't see it that way. They think they're getting something for nothing. That's the big inside joke in Washington. The people who really know the town are in on the gag. Everybody else is a dope, as far as they're concerned. But that hasn't stopped the progress of unneeded projects. True need takes a back seat to politics. And the system is rigged to see to it that once the spigot has been turned on, it can't be turned off (the Supercollider in Texas being the only counter example I can think of). When John Stennis and Jamie Whitten teamed up to build the Tennessee Tombigbee Waterway through Mississippi and Alabama, they started it at both ends and in the middle. When the pressure to kill it or scale it back built up, they argued that it would just be a useless billion-dollar ditch if they stopped now. The only solution that made sense, they argued, was to put in another billion-some dollars and finish it up. Otherwise people would say, "There goes Congress, wasting the taxpayer's money again." Never mind that new studies were showing the same thing the old studies had showed: that there was no point in building the thing in the first place. It was too late for that now, the smug old Southerners argued. Best to just suck it up and do what's right. The idea is to have a lot of partially completed parts, each with a good deal of money invested. Then you can evoke the great cry of the porker: "We've got too much invested to kill this project now! Think of all the money we'd be wasting." Naturally, Congress went along. The same Jamie Whitten was quoted as saying "When we put the federal government in is when our rural areas quickly became wealthy." Farming of course has changed from family farms to factories. Today, half of the people getting subsidies earn more than $100,000 per year, but no matter -- the "poor farmer" needs all the help Congress can provide. One source
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