Palin on Bridge to Nowhere: Take the Money And Run!
by: Mike Caulfield
Fri Aug 29, 2008 at 20:41:47 PM EDT
Today:
Palin also shares McCain's opposition to earmarks, opposing the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere," a pet project of two titans of Alaska politics, Rep. Don Young and Sen. Ted Stevens.
"I told Congress, 'Thanks, but no thanks' on that Bridge to nowhere," said Palin, who describes herself as a foe of the "good-old-boy network."
Um, not quite. As noted here, Palin supported the project until well after the initial money was siphoned off.
What's worse than taking $200 million for a bridge to nowhere? How about taking the $200 million and not even building the freaking bridges?
The Republican-controlled Congress still gave Alaska the $452 million it had requested for the two bridges, merely removing the earmark directing where the state should spend the money. Gov. Frank H. Murkowski (R), who was once Stevens's junior colleague in the Senate, intends to spend that money on the bridges.
And after they got the money? Out of the highway bill and into Alaska's treasury?
Oh... bridges? We said we needed it for *bridges*?
"We will continue to look for options for Ketchikan to allow better access to the island," Gov. Sarah Palin said. "The concentration is not going to be on a $400 million bridge."
In other words -- we got the money. We're good.
Wow. Is there room for an addendum in Profiles in Courage?
But hey, I'm sure siphoning off that money to Alaska didn't hurt anybody, right?
Just last month, presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, said pet projects could have played a role in a Minnesota bridge collapse that killed 13 people earlier this year.
"Maybe if we had done it right, maybe some of that money would have gone to inspect those bridges and other bridges around the country," McCain told a group of people in a town-hall style meeting in Ankeny, Iowa.
"Maybe the 200,000 people who cross that bridge every day would have been safer than spending $233 million of your tax dollars on a bridge in Alaska to an island with 50 people on it."
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