TheAgitator.com
Welcome, Taxpayers!
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008In the early 1990s, Congress got the idea that America needed an underground facility where tourists could escape D.C.’s August heat and February chill while waiting out the long lines to tour the Capitol building and meet their smiling congressman. Estimated cost: about $70 million.
In the 15 years since, the project morphed into a sprawling, $621 million, three-story, ostentatious shrine to “the legislative process.” In other words, Congress built a tribute to itself. So it’s probably only fitting that members of Congress also took every opportunity throw lard at the project, just as if they were greasing up an appropriations bill.
From Citizens Against Government Waste:
Like the federal budget itself, Congress used the CVC as a warehouse for tens of millions of dollars in extravagant bells and whistles for itself. Even more reprehensible, members of Congress seeking to add special features for themselves used security concerns surrounding the September 11 attacks to justify their extravagant add-ons and constant change orders.”
Original plans called for more than half of the CVC space to be left as unfinished “shell space”, available to be outfitted for future needs. Instead, in 2001 Congress began implementing its wish list for the unfinished spaces. The House side got a two-story hearing room and the Senate grafted on a collection of small hearing rooms and a television and radio studio with adjoining makeup facilities so that senators could cut spots for their constituents back home. Those two efforts alone added $85 million to the cost of the CVC. The CVC will also have a 450-seat dining area, two orientation theaters (one for each chamber), a large auditorium, and an exhibition hall.
The building finally opened this week, three years past deadline and more than $300 million over an already bloated budget. Yesterday’s grand opening featured grand speechifying by congressional leaders and VIPs. One thing it didn’t feature: tourists and taxpayers. It was closed to the public. And with good reason. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) wasn’t content with merely bilking taxpayers for Congress’ half-billion-plus vanity project, he felt compelled to insult them, too:
“My staff tells me not to say this, but I’m going to say it anyway,” said Reid in his remarks. “In the summer because of the heat and high humidity, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol. It may be descriptive but it’s true.”
But it’s no longer going to be true, noted Reid, thanks to the air conditioned, indoor space.
And that’s not all. “We have many bathrooms here, as you can see,” Reid continued. “Souvenirs are available.”
But at least Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) is livid about the project. Alas, it’s not because the Center is vain and wasteful. DeMint is angry that the Center “ignored his request to include the phrase ‘In God We Trust’ and the Pledge of Allegiance.” If only they had included a chappel, too!
Overly grandiose, self-important, self-congratulatory, larded with wasteful add-ons demanded by individual politicians, contemptuous of taxpayers—come to think of it, this whole sorry episode might actually be the perfect tribute to Congress.
I wrote about Congress’ inability to stop the cluttering of the National Mall two years ago in reason.
OTOH, better to build it now before the bills come due and the wolf is at the door?
j/k
“Power flows from the barrel of a gun.” — Mao Zedong
Shooter is an excellent movie.
this is like a parody of a bad movie… shitty dialogue, douchebag power freaks, clueless people getting duped, and it never seems to end.
But it was really vitalt to build this because otherwise Harry Reid would have to mingle with the lower classes who smell soooo bad.
I watched the Big Dig for a decade. Always triple the budget government gets approved, throw out 2/3 of the scope, and sign up for about 30 years of high cost repairs.
What can we do to get Harry Reid out of the Senate?
http://rightklik.blogspot.com/
On Tuesday’s NPR story about this, they interviewed a former Capital tour guide who, while not particularly thrilled with the place finished her comments by saying it was a “gift to the American public”.
What would we do without these “gifts”? Well, for one thing, I guess we’d all be a little richer.
Few things piss me off more than when an expensive taxpayer-funded project is passed off as governmental generosity to us citizens. I wonder how long it will be before they name it after one of the piece of shit, sleazy, self-serving, pricks who work there.
Oh, the great unwashed…spoiling everything they pay for with their galling presence.
Seriously, Radley. This is one of those “guaranteed to foster blood-pressure issues in perfectly healthy readers” posts of yours.
Harry Reid stinks of corruption from his land deals and from his pork projects. When is he up for election?
chsw
“In the summer because of the heat and high humidity, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol. It may be descriptive but it’s true.”
What? He could actually smell the peasants?
Ass.
Bravo! I doubt that it’s possible to more precisely characterize the attitude of those in Washington who spend the money toward those in the rest of the country who merely provide it.
commoners always pay tribute to their keepers. in this case the tribute has been used by the keepers to construct a shrine to themselves. at least the tribute was not used to wage war or further the suffering of the commoners, of which i am one.
From Crispin Sartwell’s blog: http://eyeofthestorm.blogs.com/eye_of_the_storm/
Replace the word education with taxation and you’ll see why I posted this here.
“so 64% of american students cheat. let me say this: that would be bad if education were not compulsory. if i enter into a contest – a sporting event, a game of chess or poker – because i want to play, then to cheat is disgusting. but if you put a gun to my head and make me play, then i have no obligation to abide by the rules; no one should blame me if i do whatever i can get away with. indeed, under such circumstances, cheating would be a nice little act of resistance. i think it’s deeply reprehensible when an author plagiarizes, but if writing books were compulsory, plagiarism would be understandable and at worst morally neutral. in other words, compulsory education abrogates anything we might think of as educational ethics: destroys it, vitiates it, suspends it. that’s one reason (of many) why compulsory education is an absurd concept, or merely a contradiction in terms. our educational institutions teach that capitulation is the essence of honor, which of course is exactly the center of our moral training of young people. if they come out of that cheaters, you’re getting what you deserve, what you’re begging for.”
That quote by Reid–it sounds like he’s defending the project by saying the people smelled before it was built, that the thing was intended to move the lines elsewhere. No question it’s a wasteful boondoggle, but I’m not sure that quote is so dead-on as you think it is.
ice
What’s a chappel?