Pig Book Finds Record $29 Billion in Wasteful Spending

Your tax dollars at work? This year, your Congress approved spending $500,000 of your money for the Sparta Teapot Museum in Sparta, North Carolina; $550,000 of your money for the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington; and $1 million of your money for a Waterfree Urinal Conservation Initiative. Those are just a few of the 9,963 projects in the 2006 spending bills tagged as "pork" by the Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) in their 2006 Congressional Pig Book.

Since its first edition in 1991, the Pig Book has identified $241 billion of what CAGW considers wasteful pork-barrel spending authorized by Congress. The $29 billion in pork-barrel spending reported for 2006 sets an all-time record and is 6.2 percent more than last year’s piggy total of $27.3 billion.

"Pork-barrel spending illustrates and contributes to the meltdown of spending restraint in Washington," said CAGW President Tom Schatz in a press release. "Instead of averting an impending fiscal crisis, members of Congress are grabbing the spoils to support their own re-election."

Also See:
Government Funded Study Shows Rich People Have More Plants
CAMRA: A Study of Government Waste?
Pork Barrel = Teapot Museum?