In mid-August we reported that shortly before Congress recessed an anonymous senator placed a hold on widely popular anti-pork legislation introduced by Senators Barack Obama and Tom Coburn. The bill, which has backers on both sides of the aisle, would create a publicly accessible database that tracks federal contracts, loans, and grants, giving taxpayers the opportunity to actually see how their tax dollars are spent –- and, all too often, misspent.
After we broke the story, a grassroots campaign began in earnest to unmask the offending legislator, with citizens around the country contacting their senators. Well, the anonymous senator is no longer anonymous. TPMmuckraker is reporting that Senator Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican, is holding the bill back from floor consideration. Yes, that’s the same Ted Stevens who earmarked more than $200 million to build the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere,” which would connect Ketchikan, Alaska, a city of 8,900, with the its airport on Gravina island, home to all of 50 inhabitants. There’s speculation that Stevens may have blocked this important legislation simply out of spite for its co-sponsor, Tom Coburn. Last fall, it was Coburn who led the charge to block Stevens’ outlandish earmark, suggesting that the money be spent instead on rebuilding a Louisiana bridge damaged during Hurricane Katrina. When Coburn’s proposal was considered, Stevens “threw the senatorial version of a hissy fit,” as The Washington Post described it, during which he bellowed this warning to his fellow senators: “I will put the Senate on notice — and I don’t kid people — if the Senate decides to discriminate against our state and take money only from our state, I will resign from this body.” As the Post put it, and no doubt many would agree, that “sounds awfully tempting to us.”
Update: This is rich. Stevens’ spokesman, Aaron Saunders, is now saying that the senator placed a hold on the bill because he’s concerned about its potential cost. Stevens “wanted to make sure that this wasn’t going to be a huge cost to the taxpayer and that it achieves the goal which the bill is meant to achieve,” Saunders said. The whopping price tag of the database: about $15 million, which is approximately $208 million less than the amount Stevens earmarked for the “Bridge to Nowhere.”
