What’s the compromise between spending $14 billion and $15 billion?

In Washington, that’s $23 billion.

The recent Water Resources Development bill was originally approved by the Senate at $14 billion, and by the House for a billion dollars more. So negotiators between the two houses cooked up a compromise.

In most parts of the world, a compromise between two figures is somewhere in between. But math isn’t exactly the strong suit of our elected reps, so the compromise surged eight billion dollars or more too high.

Thankfully, the president stamped a veto on it and the pork-infested projects bill went back to Congress. Which voted to overturn the veto.

The bloated pus sac of special projects for the Army Corps of Engineers is now law.

Mark Tapscott, editorial page editor at the Washington Examiner, wrote about this in early November. He pointed out that Republican political support for the bill was strong. “Too many Republicans,” he wrote, “are more interested in protecting their ability to spend tax dollars to advance their own political interests than they are in using their position to do what they were sent to Washington to do.”

Tapscott then wrote that he thinks that the GOP is dead, for all fiscally conservative intents and purposes. So, he says, it’s time to start talking about “the dead elephant in the living room.”

OK, I may be a political activist, but I’m calling this early: I don’t have dead elephant clean-up duty.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

• Episode Number: 1950
• Publication Date: 11/30/2007