Porkbusters

It's infuriating that the media only offers two choices in polls about how to pay for Katrina: Either cut spending in Iraq, or raise taxes.

There are other options! First, start with Glenn Reynolds' great poll. See what a difference it makes when you give people other response choices?

Now, Glenn and N.Z. Bear have teamed up to get the blogosphere involved in idenifying pork in the federal budget. I posted about it at the BBA. The idea is to identify spending that could be cut so that we can pay for Katrina.

So far, bloggers have identified almost $13,000,000,000 in pork. I'm sure by the time you click on that link it will be higher.

The object of this exercise should be to find pork that we personally are willing to sacrifice. It's always easy to point to someone else's federal windfall as wasteful, but harder -- and far more productive -- to cut our own dependence on government money. (See this post for one example of the attitude you'll need to cut the purse strings.)

It helps to always remember that "government money" is nothing but our own money taken from us in the first place, of course.

I'm going to call the New Berlin mayor today, to find out what kind of federal money we get here, and I'm also going to call my State Rep and State Senator.

Anyone else want to join in, please do.