Republicans in Congress reportedly are setting the stage to unite against pork barrel spending. The tradition of Congress to earmark projects for the national budget that benefit only a small area of the country is the cause of much of our national out-of-sight expenditures.
If a project benefits only St. Charles Parish, La., let our council plan for it and pay for it with parish taxes. If it benefits Louisiana-at-large but no other states, likewise let our governor and state legislature handle it.
Leave the federal treasury for projects that help promote what our country needs as a whole to do its job. Then we can cut national taxes and let the parishes and counties or states handle the local matters by raising taxes at home where it will be cheaper. And we won’t have so much bureaucracy in Washington that is making our political system so inefficient.
U. S. 90 workers doing a good job
Congtatulations to workers on imporvement of U. S. 90 between Boutte and Des Allemands. The work is progressing quickly with little interruption in traffic.
Road repairs are an ongoing thing. When you have highways, they wear out, especially with today’s high traffic volumes.
On the other hand, work on the Huey Long Bridge is taking forever and the end does not appear in sight. Traffic lanes have been closed daily and at times all traffic going east or west has been shut off.
When the project was planned, an entirely new bridge just west of the present structure, instead of enlarging the old one, was considered for auto traffic which would have increased traffic flow even more than the present project.
And it would not have affected the flow of traffic on the present bridge while construction was underway.
As for cost, we wonder if it would not have been even cheaper considering the delays experienced to the present traffic and in the construction as crews have to wait for traffic to be controlled before going to work.
Time will tell if the Huey that emerges after construction, which is still a few years off, will have been worth the delays.
Obama impressive in far-east trip
Pres. Barack Obama made an appearance in Indonesia during his tour of the far-east this week in which he reflected on his youth when he lived in that country. He undoubtedly impressed Muslims in that country where they have their greatest percentage of population in the world.
He praised Indonesians for standing ground against violent extremism and a cheering crowd of young people claimed him as their own. We need more appearances like that to help defeat terrorism in the world today.
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