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Remember the concern over our soldiers on the front in Afghanistan and Iraq not having the protective vests they needed? Remember the Humvees we were concerned about being vulnerable on the bottom to road-side bombs? Do you think our senators were concerned enough when reports came out about straining military equipment?
In February of 2007,the Center for American Progress reported reported on the lack of equipment for our soldiers and noted how forces were resorting to "sharing".
Today, CNN reports the following on our Senators who continue to abuse funds for pork barrel projects:
"Funds meant to help U.S. troops at war are instead being spent on senators' pet projects that are geared more toward helping their home states.
Utah National Guardsmen returning from risky deployments receive a gesture of appreciation, a video scrapbook about their battalion and tour of duty. The videohe Washington Times is produced by a business in Utah called StoryRock.
Utah's Republican Sen. Robert Bennett wants to help his home-state company take their project nationwide, so he's secured a $5 million earmark in the defense spending bill.
That $5 million comes from the fund that's supposed to pay for troops' basic needs such as food, fuel and ammunition."
All in all, Senators diverted 2.7 million from funds intended for our troops to cover the cost of funding pet projects in their home states. The list includes Republicans and Democrats. In fact, since Oct. of this year, the pork barrel spending has increased rather than subsided as Obama promised it would.
The Washington Times talked to Winslow Wheeler who conducted the independent investigation or the Center of Defense Information said:
"These are the accounts that pay for troop training, repairs, spares and supplies for vehicles, weapons, ships and planes, food and fuel," Mr. Wheeler said. Raiding those accounts to fund big-ticket projects the military does not want, but that benefit senators' home states or campaign contributors, amounts to "rancid gluttony".![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=dd3e37ea-ec08-4c41-9a66-e9543c825b22)
