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Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Sow’s earmark is, or is not, a silk purse
Group focuses on "mysterious" $100K for Wesleyan College in Macon
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Got a call from Annie Patnaude on Tuesday. She seemed nice enough. Respectful of her elders. Well-spoken. And she had just been escorted off the grounds of Wesleyan College, that most ancient and venerated Methodist institution in Macon.
Patnaude is with a Washington-based group called Americans for Prosperity. They’re on a bus tour across the South, focusing on the “earmarks� contained in the recent budget appropriation aimed at funding the war in Iraq and relief for Hurricane Katrina.
Before we go too deeply, allow us to put forth: One man’s porcine earmark is another’s silk purse. (For the uninformed: This is a Clever Play of an Old Adage. Sow’s ear /= silk purse.)
That said, Americans for Prosperity was focused on a particular $100,000 from the federal government aimed at the city of Macon.
Originally, in the 2004 Veterans Affairs Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill, it was intended to help preserve a historic Coca-Cola building.
But the city sold the property. So the money was shifted, in the Senate’s version of the Iraq-Katrina relief bill, to a new driver’s license facility in Macon. But in the House-Senate conference committee, the appropriation was “mysteriously� shifted for “facility renovation, build out and construction at Wesleyan College.� So says Americans for Prosperity.
(We got this late in the day, so no opportunity for comment from Wesleyan.)
What moving hand did this? Hard to say. Patnaude doesn’t know. But likely it was Republican. Johnny Isakson or Saxby Chambliss in the Senate. A far greater number of suspects are in the U.S. House.
Earmarks in federal budgets are anonymous things, so we may never know.
Wesleyan may have needed the money. Given the strapped state of private educational institutions, it may have been desperate. You can decide.
But it’s an interesting debate, with an aspect that we haven’t mentioned yet. Americans for Prosperity is an anti-tax group that has Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, on its board.
AFP’s new president is Tim Phillips, formerly the right-hand man of Ralph Reed at Century Strategies, now running for lieutenant governor.
“We have nothing against Wesleyan College, but this perfectly illustrates the problem with earmarks,� Phillips is quoted as saying in a press release. “This new earmark for Wesleyan was added behind the closed doors of a conference committee, with no information in the legislation about what facility is being renovated, built out and/or constructed.�
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