|
(Washington, D.C.) -
Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today criticized
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) for his recent
flip regarding new spending on top of the just-passed, bloated $170
billion farm bill.
Initially, Conrad
praised the farm bill's frugality, sounding like a fiscal
conservative (or just a man in denial):
"You
know, one of the most interesting facts about this new farm bill is
it spends less money than we've been spending to support our
farmers. A little-reported fact: Under the new farm bill, the
first year it will cost $16 billion. Last year we spent $22 billion
supporting farmers. The year before that, $32 billion. And the
reason the analysis is wrong, that we have seen so much of,
including Concord Coalition, is they forget that we have not been
just giving farmers money from the farm bill. We have also been
passing economic disaster assistance each year for the last four
years," Senator Kent Conrad
(D-ND).
- NBC's Meet the Press with Tim Russert, June 9th
2002
Four days
later, Conrad returned to his usual porcine ways, calling for still
more farm spending.
Farm-state
lawmakers, dissatisfied with the generosity of the recently enacted
farm law and undeterred by a presidential veto threat, are plowing
ahead to secure more aid for farmers in the fiscal 2003 agriculture
spending bill...."I always thought that the agriculture
appropriations bill was the most appropriate place," said
Sen. Kent Conrad, (D-ND). "I
think we need time to build support. We will have additional
disasters. I wish that was not the case, but that has been the
history. With each additional disaster, we will build
support."
- CQ Daily Monitor, June 13, 2002
On a separate
but related note, earlier in June CAGW named Sen. Conrad it's
Co-Porker of the Month. See http://www.cagw.org/ for more
information.
Citizens Against
Government Waste is the nation's largest nonpartisan, nonprofit
organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and
mismanagement in government.
###
|
