The New York Times > National > Built With Steel, Perhaps, but Greased With Pork
Here's a great example of Paul Samuelson's theory about the problem with public goods. There is no check on oversupply. Put differently, there is just no adequate mechanism for the taxpayers to let the legislators know they don't want their money wasted on pork barrel projects like these. Bush is going to veto this bill, I think. Congress simply can't control its spending. They are like the serial killer who writes the note saying "Stop me before I kill again!" They keep adding on their own pet projects and then they logroll and vote for each others, and soon you have abominations like the highway bill.
KETCHIKAN, Alaska, April 8 — "Even by the standards of Alaska, the land where schemes and dreams come for new life, two bridges approved under the national highway bill passed by the House last week are monuments to the imagination. One, here in Ketchikan, would be among the biggest in the United States: a mile long, with a top clearance of 200 feet from the water — 80 feet higher than the Brooklyn Bridge and just 20 feet short of the Golden Gate Bridge. It would connect this economically depressed, rain-soaked town of 7,845 people to an island that has about 50 residents and the area's airport, which offers six flights a day (a few more in summer). It could cost about $200 million. The other bridge would span an inlet for nearly two miles to tie Anchorage to a port that has a single regular tenant and almost no homes or businesses. It would cost up to $2 billion. These "bridges to nowhere," as critics have dubbed the two costliest of the high-priority projects in the six-year, $275 billion House bill, are one reason Republicans are fighting among themselves in shaping the nation's transportation spending."