Washington helps us out

Tom Coburn, medical doctor and U.S. senator from the state of Oklahoma, can hardly be dismissed as an illiterate hayseed. But that doesn’t stop government bureaucrats and tax-funded researchers from annually squealing that Sen. Coburn — in his ongoing campaign against government waste — “just doesn’t get” the vital importance of — oh — a $997,766 grant for “poetry in zoos.”

The document leading to all the squawking is Sen. Coburn’s annual “Wastebook’ report. And this year, two Las Vegas expenditures made the senator’s Top 10.

“Last year alone, the government spent well over $1 trillion more than it collected in taxes,” Sen. Coburn explains. “Every one of those borrowed dollars will need to be paid back with interest, and unless we can rein in spending, it will also mean higher taxes. … Consider that in 2010 the government spent nearly $2 million to showcase neon signs no longer in use at Las Vegas casinos. …”

That’s right: Third on Sen. Coburn’s 2010 Hall of Infamy is the $5.2 million in federal funds used to build our Neon Boneyard Park and Museum, where over the past decade museum supporters have gathered and displayed more than 150 old Las Vegas neon signs.

Also making the top 10 was Sen. Harry Reid’s pride and joy, the Clark County Shooting Park, funded in part with $64 million from Washington.

Promoters promised the range would be staffed with volunteers, but instead Clark County has sent some of its least needed bureaucrats to operate the facility, and partially as a result, “The park has been losing money. This year, the park had $430,000 in revenues, but cost $1.3 million to operate.”

Some in Nevada might argue that these two expenditures are, in fact, legitimate projects in need.

Sorry. As it happens, Sen. Coburn is right.

That’s not to say Clark County residents may not benefit from a shooting park, or that tourists may not be drawn to the neon museum. That’s not the question. The question is whether Congress has any authority to spend the hard-earned money of taxpayers in Maine and Louisiana on such stuff.

The Constitution provides a list of the limited purposes for which the Congress may allocate money to “promote the general welfare.” Local tourist traps and recreational facilities are not included, and would stretch the idea of the “general” welfare, anyway. Surely these facilities promote only the “specific” welfare of Las Vegans, and arguing that some of our own money will henceforth be seized and spent on something equally non-vital in Vermont or Minnesota is small consolation.

“Since 2000, the government borrowed and spent $8 trillion and we still find ourselves in one of the worst economic periods of the past century,” Sen. Coburn concludes. “At a time when we are borrowing over $44,000 for every person in the country, are these items a priority and are they a federal responsibility?”

Nope.