Anti-Pork Triumphalism

More progress on the pork front. Nowhere near the $200 billion level, but Katrina has given Democrat politicians an incentive to play this as a dig against Tom Delay and George Bush, and politicians who never have felt comfortable with pork barrel spending a cause to rally to.

I'd love to be proven wrong on this. It needs to become fixed in the mind of every voter that having the government do things for you is usually proof that you're incompetent. The Federal Government was never intended to replace the state governments the way it has, and it needs to start looking for ways to cut spending on subsidies and welfare of all kinds, including various tax credits and exemptions that benefit private businesses and farmers. It has a number of legitimate types of spending, such as national defense, regulating interstate commerce, but most of the bureaucracy is a sinkhole for money. We'd do better going back to the days when income taxes were below 1% and most federal funds were from excise and tarrif taxes.