The following letter to the editor appeared in the Knoxville News Sentinel:Harold Ford Jr. offers commonsense ideas
Our federal government is spending our country into a massive deficit. Many of Congress' expensive pork-barrel practices — spending proposals tacked onto the end of appropriations bills in order to get out of normal budgetary procedures — seem ridiculous and irresponsible.
The bipartisan group Citizens Against Government Waste claims $29 billion of taxpayers' money was designated to pork projects for the year 2006 alone.
Luckily, Tennesseans have a creative and fiscally conservative U.S. Senate candidate in Harold Ford Jr. Ford, currently a U.S. representative, has fresh ideas on ways to cut down on pork spending, the simplest being that the entire bills, including the often wasteful pork spending, should be posted for anyone to read at least three days before the vote on the bill.
This measure would expose wasteful spending practices and reduce irresponsible pork projects by making members of Congress more accountable to the taxpayers who elected them.
While some of these pork projects may be well worth taxpayers' money, they should all be more closely scrutinized and debated as the national debt is spiraling out of control.
This is one of many commonsense ideas offered by Ford. Hopefully, Tennesseans can come together in November and elect this innovative leader to the U.S. Senate.
Bo Creason
Knoxville
