Rossputin.com Rational Thinking About Our World

PUBLISHED in the Denver Post, 12/28/06
http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_4908861

re "GOP Congress hit Colo. hard by not passing budget bills" (Denver Post, 12/26/06)
http://blogs.denverpost.com/washington/2006/12/26/gop-congress-hit-colo-hard-by-not-passing-budget-bills/

To the Editor:

Rather than wail about Colorado being “hit hard” by the Federal government not passing spending bills, taxpayers should be cheering…and reconsidering the proper role of the Federal government in the life of a State.

Why should a Coloradoan assume that the Federal government, rather than Colorado taxpayers, should be funding Colorado water infrastructure, much less local hospitals or parks? Why should taxpayers in Michigan be paying for new buildings at Colorado colleges, and why should Coloradoans be paying for improvements in Michigan? It has become, as it must, a wrestling match between states to try to squeeze the most out of the system at the expense of taxpayers in all other states.

Federal earmarks are as unjust within a state as between states. Why should taxpayers in Boulder be funding recreation in Pueblo, particularly without any debate in the State Legislature where Colorado spending priorities are probably better understood than in DC? Of the millions of dollars in earmarks not passed in the closing of the last Congress, only NREL deserves Federal money. Beyond that, it is good news for taxpayers that, at least temporarily, we will be spared from paying for so much pork-barrel waste. The goal now is not to get those earmarks passed but realizing that they should never have existed to begin with.

Ross Kaminsky is a regional coordinator for the Colorado Club for Growth and a fellow of the Heartland Institute (Chicago).