As an anti-pork, small government fiscal libertarian, I really has a lot of disdain for Alaskan Senators Don Young and Ted Stevens. Even though Ted Stevens recently had a corruption case dropped against him, I don’t want him in the Congress. And I wouldn’t mind Don Young being replaced either.
Pat Toomey at the Wall Street Journal explains:
Mr. Young spends taxpayer money so wastefully he could make a liberal Democrat blush. As chairman of the Transportation Committee (from 2001 to 2007), Mr. Young was directly responsible for one of the biggest boondoggles of the Republican majority – the 2005 highway bill. With a price tag of $296 billion, the highway bill contained a record 6,371 pork projects.
One of those projects was the $223 million Bridge to Nowhere, inserted by Mr. Young. The notorious bridge was meant to connect the city of Ketchikan, Alaska – population 8,000 – to an airport on Gravina Island – population 50. Instead, it came to symbolize Republican excess, and helped cost the GOP its majority.
Sen. Young is no fiscal conservative. And neither was his counterpart. In fact, Ted Stevens stood on the floor of the Senate and declared that if the money for the Bridge to Nowhere were stripped, he would resign. I wish he had.
Now, these two clowns are at it again. Don Young says that Ted Stevens should run against Gov. Sarah Palin in 2010:
"Personally I’d like to see him run for governor, and that’s my personal feeling," Young told the Alaska Public Radio Network on Thursday. "So, we’ll see what happens down the line. He probably won’t, but I think that would be a great way to cap off a great career as being the governor of the state of Alaska."
Stevens will be 87 years old by the time the next governor takes office in January 2011.
Palin is still enjoying high approval ratings and Stevens’ name, regardless of the case being dropped, has been tarnished. Besides that, Stevens has no running a budget. He simply can’t handle the people’s money.
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