The Swine Line

Article in the Times West Virginian about Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), CAGW’s King of Pork:

Byrd has helped earmark nearly $229 million in three major spending bills for fiscal year 2008. Most of that money will find its way to West Virginia.

…Byrd’s largest single allocation is a $54 million earmark in the defense spending bill for the Allegany Ballistics Laboratory in Mineral County.

Located in Rocket Center, the lab employs more than 1,000 people and manufactures composite structures for F-22 Raptor fighter aircraft and other aerospace projects. The facility also produces 30mm shells for Apache helicopters, grenades, sensors, mortars and warheads.

The laboratory has named most of its offices after the senator, such as the Robert C. Byrd Hilltop Office Complex and the Robert C. Byrd Institute for Advanced Flexible Manufacturing.

…Byrd’s third-largest earmark, at $16 million, came in a transportation spending bill to support Corridor H, a four-lane highway that has been in the works for nearly 20 years.

In 1988, the highway received its first funding in the amount of $16 million. That was the beginning of a 135-mile road that will connect Interstate 79 at Weston to near I-66 and I-81 near Strasburg, Va.

The project had been ridiculed nationwide as the “Robert Byrd Road to Nowhere,” but completion of the highway has remained a top priority for West Virginia officials who want to open up the rural, north-central part of the state to the Eastern Seaboard.