Dear Senator Crapo: Transportation Pork

As part of my new series of letters to Idaho’s members of Congress that I’m publishing, I’m posting this letter to Senator Mike Crapo regarding his votes on some transportation issues. Senator Crapo voted to table a common sense amendment by Senator Tom Coburn that would have forbidden Transportation earmarks to pay for repair of the nation’s bridges, but did vote for an Amendment that would have transferred funds used for that vital national need of bikepaths to pay for repairing our nation’s bridges and avoiding another disaster like happened in Minneapolis:

Dear Senator Crapo,

While I was disappointed that you didn’t back the Coburn Amendment to remove all transportation earmarks from the Senate Transportation Appropriations bill in order to repair our nation’s bridges, I did want to thank you for showing common sense several times when your colleagues didn’t.

First of all, I really appreciate your vote to not spend taxpayer funds on bike paths while our nation’s bridges crumble. It remains beyond belief that 4/5 of your colleagues would support such frivolous parochial spending while the lives and safety of American citizens are at risk on dillapidated bridges.  On the same token, I also appreciated your vote for Amendment 2813 which rejected wasteful pork funding on a baseball stadium in Montana.

You also wisely chose to put America’s bridges and our safey before the big unions by voting to wave the Davis-Bacon rules which require that the federal government pay the prevailing wage on all projects rather than doing competitive bids to get the best deal for taxpayers.

Senator, I’m pleased with most of your votes. I hope that should an Amendment such as the first Coburn Amendment I referenced come up again that you’ll support it as part of a consistently fiscally conservative stance.

Thank You,
Adam Graham

(Address Omitted)

Please check how your Senator voted and modify the language accordingly. While I urge you to keep your letter civil, most won’t have as many nice things to say to their Senator as I did to mine.

Sources: Club for Growth and Government Bytes