The Bridge to Nowhere -- or Perhaps the Nomination

On Thursday, the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to divert $233 million in federal transportation dollars that were approved for a bridge proposal in Alaska, to rebuild the Twin-Spans Bridge in hurricane-ravaged Louisiana. The quarter-mile span in Alaska, known by critics as the "Bridge to Nowhere," would connect the port town of Ketchikan and its airport to neighboring Gravina Island. A ferry now links these two points.

The Amendment's threat to logrolling as we know it was real and substantial. Committee appropriators publicly rebuked the Amendment's sponsor, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, for suggesting that the sums could be diverted to better uses. Spendthrift Patty Murray (D-WA), savages Coburn for his common-sense and his moxie, interestingly enough, by blaming the Senate's lack of spending discipline on tax cuts. Sputters Murray:

If the Senator from Oklahoma wants to look for a culprit for the fiscal situation in this country, he should look into the billions and billions of dollars in tax cuts that have been granted to multimillionaires in this country, and he should look at additional tax cuts his party wants to implement in future years if he wants to find incredible savings.

...

I hope the Senate will not go down the road of cherry-picking individual projects that Senators have come to us and have championed on behalf of their constituents who do not live here in Washington, DC. I hope we do not go down the road deciding we know better than home State Senators about the merits of the projects they bring to us.

As the old saying goes: What is good for the goose is good for the gander. And I tell my colleagues, if we start cutting funding for individual projects, your project may be next. So, Mr. President, when Members come down to the floor to vote on this amendment, they need to know if they support stripping out this project, Senator Bond and I are likely to be taking a long, serious look at their projects to determine whether they should be preserved during our upcoming conference negotiations. We must not and we will not go down the road of picking on one Senator or another on the floor of the Senate. I urge a no vote on this amendment.

Likewise interesting was the final vote on Coburn's proposed re-routing: 15-82. Both Minnesota Senators voted no; but among Coburn's supporters were would-be Presidential contenders of both parties -- Feingold of Wisconsin, Bayh of Indiana and Allen of Virginia.

George Allen was looking pretty good to me long before Thursday -- but now he appears even better.