Letter to the Editor O' the Day

In general the Seattle PI is a pretty lame newspaper, but occasionally they carry a bit of brilliance. From today's letters:

Wasteful spending happens here, too

While I agree with Joel Connelly's sentiment in his Wednesday column, "Passing the hat in the 'GOP Welfare State,' " that we need to watch wasteful "pork barrel" spending, one part of the story that he is leaving out is that when Republican Sen. Tom Coburn got up on the floor of the Senate and proposed an amendment to control these types of appropriations, including the famous "bridge to nowhere," our very own Sen. Patty Murray had this to say:

"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, Sen. 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."

Perhaps if we want to look for the cause of wasteful spending, we should be looking at home.

James Bennett

Bellevue

The original source for Senator Murray's quote by the way is at Radioblogger, they also include an MP3, as well as Senator Coburn's response.