Yesterday's Star Tribune article, Earmarks ban may sink state projects, reports that the fate of the Lewis & Clark Rural Water System may be in jeopardy:
For towns like Worthington, in southwestern Minnesota, a new congressional ban on "earmarks," which could dry up funding for the Lewis and Clark regional water co-op, would be the worst-case scenario. . . .
. . .At least $100 million in Minnesota projects hang in the balance for this fiscal year, including $2 million for the Minnesota National Guard's "Beyond the Yellow Ribbon" reintegration program for returning vets.
But none matches the scope of the Central Corridor rail line and the multi-state Lewis and Clark project, a massive, $542 million waterworks that will pipe safe drinking water from the Missouri River aquifer to hundreds of thousands of residents in drought-prone towns like Worthington and spur businesses like the 2,500-employee Swift pork processing plant.
Losing the project "would be devastating," said Troy Larson, executive director of the Lewis and Clark Regional Water System, which Congress authorized a decade ago to serve the dry prairies of western Minnesota, eastern South Dakota and northern Iowa. Among the project's champions are fiscal conservatives like U.S. Rep Steve King, R-Iowa. Local communities in the tri-state area have already ponied up $153 million.
The editorial board in Worthington isn't very happy. The Globe opines in Keep water project flowing:
Have those advocating for the elimination of earmarks forgotten why they go to Washington in the first place? Last we checked, we elected folks to national office to serve our overall interests — including bringing a piece of the federal pie back home.
A Minnesota Republican, John Kline, told the Star Tribune that he objects to the system by which federal money is allocated. Yet Democrat Betty McCollum, also from Minnesota, pointed out in the same report that earmarks represent less than 1 percent of the federal budget and go toward specific projects that affect local communities.
What’s our take? There’s no doubt that the future of economic development in this region relies on an adequate water supply, which the Lewis and Clark project helps ensure. The politics of GOP folks like Kline, Michele Bachmann and other same-party Minnesotans effectively amounts to a turning of multiple backs on intra-state neighbors.
The Mankato Free Press's Mark Fischenich takes an extended look at The trouble with earmarks:
When Al Forsberg thinks of congressional earmarks, he doesn’t think of the “bridge to nowhere” or the “hippie museum” at Woodstock.
Forsberg, the Blue Earth County public works director, thinks of County Road 90, the Victory Drive extension project and the new County Road 12 interchange on Mankato’s eastern edge. All received federal appropriations and wouldn’t have happened as quickly — or at all — without the outside financial help.
Anyone looking objectively at those improvements would decide they were valuable projects rather than the frivolous and wasteful spending that earmark projects represent in opponents’ minds, Forsberg said.
Read the whole article at the Free Press. How will the region fund worthwhile projects? How will Steve King explain. now that Congressman Walz will no longer allowed to carry his water for him in Washington?
Photo: Representative Steve King: will the wells run dry?
Meanwhile, Jon Kyl (R-Hypocrite) wants his earmarks! http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/11/24/kyl-seeks-big-earmark-three-days-after-gop-earmark-ban/
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | Nov 25, 2010 at 11:13 PM