Thanks to all your efforts, Senator Vitter asked that the $100,000 he earmarked for the creationist Lousiana Family Forum be given to someone else.
Thank you for your calls and emails to your Senators. If you have time, you might want to call your congresscritters back and offer your heartfelt thanks for helping do the right thing. Folks on the Hill don't get a lot of happy phone call, and would appreciate your thoughtfulness.
Vitter's remarks are below the fold.
Mr. VITTER. Madam President, I rise today to discuss a project I sponsored in the fiscal year 2008 Labor, Health, Human Services and Education appropriations bill. The project, which would develop a plan to promote better science-based education in Ouachita Parish by the Louisiana Family Forum, has raised concerns among some that its intention was to mandate and push creationism within the public schools. That is clearly not and never was the intent of the project, nor would it have been its effect. However, to avoid more hysterics, I would like to move the $100,000 recommended for this project by the subcommittee when the bill goes to conference committee to another Louisiana priority project funded in this bill.
Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, I appreciate the sentiments by the Senator from Louisiana and accept this proposal to move the funding for this project to other priority projects for the State of Louisiana in the bill when it goes to conference committee.
Mr. SPECTER. Madam President, I concur with my colleague and will agree to move these funds in conference committee.
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Note that the money doesn't go back to taxpayer. It just gets slopped into some other useless, self-serving little piece of pork (porklet? pork rind?).
Just out of curiosity, who is the "Madam President" addressed in these quotes? The President of the Senate?
I believe that's correct. It appears that Sen. Cantwell was the presiding officer for a while, and later Sen. Casey took over, at which point they started saying Mr. President again.
Andy, it's true that the money doesn't go back into our pockets, but it will go toward actually improving education in Lousiana, rather than toward undermining it.
$100,000 earmarked for use in education doesn't strike me as a terribly outrageous example of pork compared to multi-million dollar bridges to nowhere and a multi-billion dollar war that seems to be benefiting only Halliburton and Blackwater.