Politics and accountability

Inter Lake editorial

Regrettably, we have right here in Montana precisely the type of federal stimulus spending that we expected to come from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats rushed the whopping $787 billion stimulus package through in March, pledging that it would not contain pet project "earmarks' and the spending would be "transparent" and "merit-based." Oh yes, and the projects absolutely had to be 'shovel-ready" in order to provide a rapid infusion of job-producing federal money into the ailing economy.

Well, a $15 million upgrade for a customs checkpoint at the tiny Montana border town of Whitetail meets none of those criteria and is being held up in national media as a shining example of the worst kind of stimulus spending.

Sure, it will probably be a big project for Whitetail, population 71, where an average of only three vehicles a day cross the U.S.-Canadian border and only about $63,000 in freight crosses each year.

Problem is that the Whitetail got stimulus money while other border projects with obviously more pressing needs got passed over. A checkpoint at Laredo, Texas, isn't getting any stimulus funding even though it serves more than 55,000 travelers and 4,200 trucks per day, with about $116 billion in freight passing between the U.S. and Mexico last year.

Plain and simply, the Whitetail project is earmark pork rather than a "merit-based" pursuit. Montana Sens. Jon Tester and Max Baucus have boasted about getting the money, and it's pretty clear that their combined political weight probably did play a part in convincing U.S. Customs to fund the project.

But we may never know. The Associated Press reports that Customs officials are not releasing a master list of potential projects for roughly $720 million in stimulus funding that was directed toward borders. So much for transparency.

What about shovel-readiness? Like nearly all stimulus spending directed at infrastructure, the real job-producing work isn't expected to get under way until next year.

Americans who are turning up at town-hall meetings are venting multiple frustrations over the way government in general operates. The Whitetail border project has just about every ingredient fueling those frustrations: pork-barrel politics, excessive spending (our bet is that folks might wonder if $15 million could be better spent), misdirected spending, lack of transparency and accountability, and the utter failure of an unprecedented program to meet its primary goal of providing a rapid economic stimulus.

If Sens. Baucus and Tester had held any town-hall meetings over the August break, they would have heard those frustrations loud and clear. Montana's lone member of the House, Rep. Denny Rehberg, did hold several public meetings with constituents prior to his recent boating accident and that's exactly what he heard. Coincidentally, Baucus is scheduled to be a speaker in a "telephone town hall" sponsored by AARP Tuesday, but it doesn't promise to be much of a free-wheeling event, as it will only last an hour and features three speakers.

In any case, this isn't about party politics; it's about political accountability. We hope our elected officials get the message loud and clear: End politics as usual, or get out of politics altogether.