The Biggest Pig Feeds At The Trough

Adult conversations? Cut spending? Shared Sacrifice? Not for Speaker Boehner. While Big Bird is taking a beating in his budget, John Boehner's not having any of that sacrifice for himself. No, he's taking a huge piece of lard that is unnecessary, a piece of pork large enough to fund PBS and NPR without any spending increases. Boehner's ridiculousness is being called out though.

But buried deeply in these 359 pages of ugly surprises is a provision that would mean one community in America would do a lot better than all of the others. The legislation added an estimated $450 million for a particular bit of defense spending that the Department of Defense did not ask for and does not want.

The item is a down payment that would obligate the federal government to future payments that could well be three or four times the increased spending added to this particular piece of legislation, with a big portion of the funds flowing to two cities in Ohio—Cincinnati, where Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) grew up, and Dayton, the largest city in his congressional district.

The money will go to pay the costs to General Electric Co.’s General Electric Aviation unit and the British-owned Rolls Royce Group for their development of an engine for the new Joint Strike Fighter aircraft—money that looks, feels, and smells very much like an earmark.

Should the Department of Defense end up paying the two companies to develop the engine it is hoped that they will then buy significant numbers of them for the aircraft. The problem that the Pentagon has with this plan for using tax dollars is that they already have an engine for the plane—an engine that was decided on when the contract for production of the plane was agreed to 10 years ago.

So while everyone else suffers through $100 billion of cuts for nothing, the Speaker of the House, a supposed leader, cuts a nice, fat, juicy, pile of pork off for himself. Leader? Hell no. He's leading for one things- the corporations at home.