March 12, 2008

Bear Pork

So more on pork. John McCain has a favorite example on wasteful spending - 3 million dollars for the study of Bear DNA. The rift is pretty good - “I don’t know if it was a paternity issue or criminal, but it was a waste of money.”

Well the truth of the matter is the program was a $1 million earmark and is about counting bears. Finding out if they are going extinct or if our conservation efforts are working. And it turns out, conservation is working. The bear is saved! And now we know. Sounds a little less silly now eh?

Oh and the cost of that bear-counting earmark? Equal to how much it costs us to stay in Iraq for about four and a half minuets (Tom Tomorrow does the math) John McCain could find and eliminate 10,000 government programs the size of the great bear-count and it wouldn't equal what we spend in one month in Iraq. In the four years of a McCain Presidency, we would spend 480 billion dollars in Iraq. That's a lot of bear counting. So don't lecture me on wasteful spending, Senator.

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