Congressional Hog Report - Issue No.2

Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) is sending more tax money down the river - literally. The Tribune has the skinny.

The upper Mississippi River system provides the cheapest route for the nation's leading corn and soybean producers to ship to export markets through ports in the Gulf of Mexico. The purported problem: long barges must be split in half before entering the water gateways, then rejoined on the other side.

The Army Corps' decade-long campaign to replace the locks was stalled in early 2000 after a whistleblower accused the corps of inflating the project's expected economic benefits. A Pentagon investigation found a systemic bias at the corps in favor of costly construction projects.

...A third report from the council is scheduled for next year. So the corps will try once again to justify a project that, from this side of the river, looks like a boondoggle.

Yeah, that's $1.7 billion - 1700 millions - to help barge travel. Yes, it will provide jobs and all of these people are Americans and the money will be spent predominantly in the Midwest and maybe help farmers and I'm supposed to be okay with all of that but...I'm just...ugh.