Even 'conservatives' have traveled D.C.'s latest 'Bridge to Nowhere'

"The current budget cut proposals being debated in Congress are the political equivalent of making a New Year's resolution to lose weight going to the gym and then not going after the first week."

So writes Tim Shoemaker on the Campaign for Liberty blog.

Shoemaker is right.

Neither the White House nor congressional Republicans are proposing deep enough spending cuts to turn America's economic ship around and escape a deficit that threatens to drown our future.

Of course, it doesn't help when self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives, including the Kentucky delegation, would vote for a defense earmark that even the Defense department has repeatedly indicated it doesn't want and that the nation doesn't need.

In fact, conservatives refer to it as the "Mother of all Earmarks" and the new "Bridge to Nowhere" project.

But GE wants it, as does Rolls-Royce, its partner in the project to build an alternate engine for the F-35 joint strike fighter.

Yep, that's right -- an "alternate" engine.

Since GE lost in the bid to build the initial jet fighter's engine to Pratt & Whitney, it's using its considerable resources -- as evidenced by a recent aggressive ad campaign aided by a $9 million lobbying effort -- to be allowed to build an "alternate" engine ... all at taxpayers' expense, of course.

Even Tea-party conservative types in D.C. are having trouble saying "no" to GE, which has a presence in or near many of conservative leaders' districts, including Speaker John Boehner's in Ohio. About 1,000 employees have been working on the engine at a GE facility near Cincinnati.

Don't be fooled by GE's claims that having an engine making competition will "drive down costs." Not so. In its own release on the matter, the Defense department said the additional costs, including "the burden of maintaining two logistical systems," will likely outweigh the savings.

On March 24, the Pentagon ordered a halt to the engine's production.

Despite the fact that the two biggest-spending presidents in U.S. history -- Barack Obama and George W. Bush, both administrations' defense secretaries and the Defense bureaucracy itself said continuing to fund the $4 billion project could sap resources needed for more immediate security concerns, GE vows to try and find a way to keep it going.

Of course, that's no problem -- as long as they do it with their own money.

Click here for a timeline by Citizens Against Government Waste of spending that's already occurred on this boondoggle.

Coming to a state near you, Kentuckians: More choices for parents, chances for kids

While Congress was busy passing a bill that would restore the torpedoed D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program on Wednesday, a state closer to home was also passing landmark education legislation dealing with school choice and spending. Indiana's House of Representatives approved a voucher bill allowing students in a family of four with household incomes up to $62,022 to receive a voucher covering from 50 percent to 90 percent of a private school tuition. Imagine how such an option could shake up, say, a district like Jefferson County, where 60 percent of students are from low-income homes. No doubt, anti-choice forces would wail about how such a voucher plan would throw government schools into chaos. But have you taken a look at that district's student-assignment plan and busing disaster lately? It appears chaos arrived long ago. We're still waiting on choice to get here.