The Integrative Stream

Federal Budget Games

Merry Christmas, Alaska. The Bridges are Back. Congress didn’t actually remove funding for Alaska’s two “Bridges to Nowhere.” They simply removed the requirement that Alaska use the $454 million in allocated federal funds for the bridges. And sure enough, the Alaskan state budget has now allocated the money to the bridge projects.

Now, I’d be willing to accept that there might be a little more to these projects than saving 8,000 people a seven minute ferry ride to the airport. I’d buy an argument that building at least one of these bridges will stir economic development in the affected areas. I’m not sure if it’s $223 million worth of development (the cost of that particular bridge), and nobody seems to be visibly making that argument anyway.

As we saw with the attempt to stick ANWR drilling into the end of year defense budget, the federal allocations process is thoroughly broken, and has been for years. The country has grown so much that a “one issue, one bill” policy is patently impossible, but there must be some way to keep bills at least generally focused. Too bad a line item veto would be so prone to political misuse.