Of all the irritating Serious Conservative ideas about Fiscal Discipline and Taming the Deficit is the crusade against big wicked spending bills loaded up with Wasteful Pork.
You will I am sure fondly recall the outcry from the GOP House about the SuperStorm Sandy relief bill. This was typical:
Porked-up Sandy relief bill storms into Senate
The Seante's emergency spending bill to cover costs from Hurricane Sandy includes millions of dollars that will never touch the affected Northeast — including money for salmon fisheries in Alaska, cash for an expansion of train service into New York, and funds to preserve and repair historic properties.
Ohmigod the bill was "porked-up" and featured such ridiculous frivolities as money for some sort of wasteful waste in Alaska. Apply fiscal rectitude! Get rid of that Alaskan boondoggle!
And fast forward....
Refrigerators, foam buoys and even ketchup bottles are piling up on Alaska's beaches. Almost two years after the devastating Japanese tsunami, its debris and rubbish are fouling the coastlines of many states — especially in Alaska.
At the state's Montague Island beach, the nearly 80 miles of rugged wilderness looks pristine from a helicopter a few thousand feet up. But when you descend, globs of foam come into view.
Chris Pallister, president of the nonprofit Gulf of Alaska Keeper, has been cleaning up debris that washes onto Alaska's shores for the past 11 years. Marine debris isn't a new issue for the state, but he says his job got a whole lot harder when the tsunami wreckage began arriving last spring.
"You're basically standing in landfill out here," he says, shaking his head in disgust.
I bet you know the punchline:
So far, there has been little money for cleanup. Alaska's congressional delegation is working to get federal funds, but tsunami debris cleanup money was recently stripped from a bill for Hurricane Sandy relief.
Almost all "porked-up" jokes have a punchline that sounds just like that. Funny!