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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
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To: Bill who wrote (14119)3/5/2000 8:12:00 PM
From: nihil  Read Replies (1) of 769667
 
You must understand that Pork Barrel anti-Cancer projects are expensive pork. Any project that is written into appropriations bills is one that has not survived the professional review process of the granting foundations and the government. If your project does not get support, you go to your Representative and Senators and demand that they insert them in the department appropriations bill. With different congressmen log rolling you can get an unsupported project funded. The total result is a government supported deck of second-rate or worse spending, instead of money that goes to the best, most competitive projects that are selected by the professional review process.
Years ago I worked as a lobbyist for my university. We got our congressmen to collect their debts. We cooperated with the Universities of Florida and Puerto Rico to cook a nice tropical agriculture pork pie. We hired the son of the agriculture appropriations subcommittee's chairman as an assistant professor at our university just to please old man Whitten. It worked slick as ice. Each of the three universities got a leg of pork. We did some good work, I suppose. But the Department of Agriculture never recommended these programs, and money that might have gone to zoonoses research was spent on growing milder durian.
IMO, Congress should not earmark money for the work of particular institutions or individuals. This should be left to program administrators and review panels. McCain is very brave to attack these swindles.
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