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Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Coconut Road Earmark Defies Laws of Physics
There was a great post yesterday on the NY Times editorial blog about the so-called "Coconut Road" scandal from the 2006 transportation reauthorization bill (for details on the scandal, see the Times coverage from June and October.)
The long and short of it is that a questionable earmark was removed from the final version of the transportation reauthorization bill by vote and then, magically it seems, appeared in the text of the bill anyway. From the Times yesterday:
Congress rejected [the] Coconut Road [earmark] in the final legislation. But then it resurfaced — apparently via some congressional staffer's clerical sleight of hand — in the suspiciously altered final law.
The mystery is how the will of Congress came to be so thwarted, and it deserves solving.
The appearance of this earmark after it was struck from the final version of the transportation bill is a violation of congressional processes and horrendously unethical to say the least. And as the Times correctly points out, the fact that nobody except Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) really cares about this is probably even worse. Congress needs to do better.
Posted by Adam Hughes
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