Cut off that nose!
The P&C rues Senator DeMint's wilfullness:
ON TODAY’S op-ed page, Bill Stern makes a compelling argument for why the Port of Charleston — and indeed, all of South Carolina — needs the Congress to appropriate $400,000 for a U.S. Corps of Engineers study that must be completed before our state can deepen the port to keep it viable as the size of ships continues to increase.
What he doesn’t say is that South Carolina is in danger of taking another significant economic hit because of the inability of several of our elected officials, particularly Sen. Jim DeMint, to distinguish shades of gray. What nobody seems to be saying out loud is that the reason there’s money in the federal budget for the Corps of Engineers to do identical studies for the ports of Savannah, Jacksonville, Wilmington and Norfolk is that the entire political leadership in Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and Virginia are working for that funding, from the united congressional delegations to the governors. In South Carolina, Sen. Lindsey Graham and Reps. Henry Brown, Jim Clyburn and John Spratt are supporting it.
We could write about how this country has for two centuries recognized that our harbors are a vital part of our national defense and our nation’s economic engine, or how it will be cheaper to deepen the Charleston harbor than those others that are getting federal funding, or how federal law makes it virtually impossible to move forward on any improvements to any port without a congressional earmark.
But it’s probably more useful to talk about the consequences of blind loyalty to political talking points — in this case the mantra that earmarks are inherently wasteful.
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