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CNN Live At Daybreak

Some May Be Frustrated to Know How Government Spending Some of Their Tax Dollars

Aired April 10, 2002 - 05:25   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: As you pay your taxes this year, you may be frustrated to know just how the government is spending some of your hard earned tax dollars. A Washington policy group says Congress has set a new spending record.

Our Brooks Jackson looks at the pork barrel spending.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROOKS JACKSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): How is the U.S. Congress like the Corleone family?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Some day, and that day may never come, I'll call upon you to do a service for me.

JACKSON: Answer, according to one watchdog group, they both run on favors, favors given and favors returned. From Congress, more favors at greater cost than ever.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They protected their incumbency as they porked out at record levels.

JACKSON: To refurbish the boardwalk at Daytona Beach, Florida, scene of an annual biker gathering, $240,000 added to the federal budget. To train hospitality workers in Las Vegas, $700,000 Congress is billing to federal taxpayers.

SEN. LARRY CRAIG (R), IDAHO: Swing low, sweet chariot.

JACKSON: Senator Larry Craig sung out for a favor, for a program to study jazz history at the University of Idaho, $750,000. And back again for yet another favor, the city of Birmingham, Alabama's famous project to refurbish a statue of Vulcan, Roman god of the forge, another $2 billion this year for what's becoming the poster image for pork barrel spending. Deficits have replaced surpluses and yet Congress shows less spending discipline than before, according to Citizens Against Government Waste.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The problem has never been this big. The pay book has never been fatter.

JACKSON: The group's annual reckoning says congressional appropriators stuck 8,341 pork barrel projects in the budget for this year, costing $20.1 billion, a record. That's nine percent more money for pork than last year, nearly $9 billion for military pork alone, including $125 million added by the House to build a destroyer like this one that administration budget officials said comes at the expense of more urgent needs, live fighting terrorism.

The navy is also getting an extra million not to fight the war on terrorism, but to recover the Confederate vessel Alabama, sunk during the Civil War.

(on camera): There's money for growing asparagus in Washington State, money for tattoo removal in California, money for combating Goth (ph) culture in Missouri and money for manure management in Iowa. It makes you wonder does Congress ever see a favor it certain refuse?

Brooks Jackson, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: I think we know the answer to that one.

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