As Chairman of the Defense Subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations, Rep. John P. Murtha, D-Pa., writes the largest single spending bill the Congress handles every year — more than $500 billion for Fiscal Year 2009.
A taxpayer would be forgiven for thinking that, as chairman, Murtha understands his role as being that of a firm steward of the taxpayer’s resources — the vigilant guardian of the treasury, whose job it is to place himself between those seeking the federal Pot O’ Money and the Pot itself, and hand over funds only to those projects he and a majority of the Congress and the President deem worthy of funding, after a long and careful inspection of the pros and cons of the thousands of funding requests that hit his committee annually.
That taxpayer would be forgiven … and that taxpayer would be wrong.