Text 16155, 77 rader
Skriven 2005-11-11 13:46:54 av Alan Hess
Ärende: Pork is our business
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washingtonpost.com
National Pork Service

By Richard Cohen
Thursday, November 10, 2005; A29

Returning home after a brief, but historic, trip to the Middle East, I am
relieved beyond words to find that Ted Stevens is still in the Senate. Before I
left, the senator from Alaska had threatened -- on the floor of the Senate, no
less -- to resign his seat if his colleagues passed a measure that would have
eliminated some of Alaska's already approved transportation projects, including
the now-famous "Bridge to Nowhere," and awarded the money to hard-pressed
Louisiana. Stevens may be the first senator to equate pork with honor. A statue
should be raised to him.

As the ever-humble Stevens would himself acknowledge, this statue --
appropriately funded with money taken from Louisiana relief -- would be not so
much in his honor as the entire Senate's, and -- why stop there? -- all of
Washington's. Indeed, the funding of ridiculous and unnecessary projects while
the government is deeply in debt (and guided by an economic numskull) has
become so much a part of contemporary Washington that -- the scolding John
McCain notwithstanding -- it ought to be memorialized. A man feeding pigs is
what I have in mind.

Schoolchildren of the future will bend their little brains memorizing Stevens's
defense of home-state pork, the transcript of which shall be engraved on the
base of the statue. They will recall that after one of the projects, a $223
million bridge from Ketchikan (population 8,900) to Gravina Island (population
50), was mocked as the "Bridge to Nowhere," Stevens properly turned the issue
into one of virtual civil rights. He recalled the days when Alaska was a mere
territory with few of the usual rights of states and said that now, once again,
it was being accorded second-class status: "It will not happen," he thundered.
"It will not happen," he bellowed.

The statue of Stevens will note that he was the first senator in American
history to take himself hostage. His threat to resign -- an action of vast
indifference to all of mankind with the possible exception of the 50 people on
Gravina Island -- would have deprived the Senate of a reverse Gold Rusher,
someone who came down from Alaska to mine for gold in Washington. His speech,
in which over and over he bemoaned the pitiful nature of his state's modest
road system, made no mention of how Alaskans pay no state income tax and are
awarded a piece of the state's oil revenue. The state is No. 1 in per capita
federal aid, which is a tribute of sorts to Stevens's ability to game the
system at the expense of us all. The statue's inscription shall, of course,
make note of that, too.

But it is his threat to resign -- "I don't threaten people; I promise people"
-- that shall forever be memorialized. It is a model of insistence, of
selfishness, of seeing the government no differently than Huey, Dewey and Louie
saw their uncle, the fabulously rich Scrooge McDuck. It's not that Stevens did
not concede that Louisiana had its needs after Hurricane Katrina; it's just
that Alaska alone should not -- regardless of the silliness of its projects --
be the sole state asked to sacrifice. Remember, Stevens said, Alaska has had
its catastrophes, too. He cited the 1964 earthquake.

As for the Democrats, they mostly let the matter slide. In that moment, they
proved themselves as much a part of this corrupt system as the Republicans who
control the government. Indeed, they could have made a production out of the
fact that President Bush not only signed the pork package without protest but
also praised it for accomplishing "goals in a fiscally responsible way." If
there is room on the plaque, this statement should be included. It is up there
with anything Daniel Webster might have said.

In the end, of course, the Senate backed down. Only 15 members stood up to
Stevens. Their names have been taken, their sanity questioned and their home
states will surely be deprived of a bike path or two. But as I traveled around
the Middle East, I would open my trusty laptop and beam up Washington, bemused
at the wholly improbable thought that while I was gone the Senate would have
the guts or the plain good taste to say to Stevens, go ahead -- quit. But that,
as every schoolchild will know from the Stevens Statue, did not happen. It is a
bridge the Senate could not cross.

cohenr@washpost.com
+ 2005 The Washington Post Company

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