At midnight last night Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) became the longest serving member of Congress. According to a November 18 Associated Press article:
Setting records is old news to the white-maned Democratic lawmaker. Since June 12, 2006, Byrd has been the longest-serving senator and later that year he was elected to an unprecedented ninth term. His colleagues have elected him to more leadership positions than any senator in history. He has cast more than 18,000 votes and, despite fragile health that has kept him from the Senate floor during much of this year, has a nearly 98 percent attendance record over the course of his career.
Is it time to celebrate? Not exactly. Sen. Byrd has used the federal treasury as his own personal ATM by sending billions of dollars to West Virginia. Senator Byrd has earned himself a special spot in the pantheon of pork barrel spending. CAGW’s Pig Book is littered with countless examples of Sen. Byrd’s pork-barrel handy work.
Sen. Byrd has been such a drain on the American taxpayer CAGW has a whole web page devoted to him called Byrd Droppings. Here are some fun facts:
- 51: Total years in the Senate (since 1958)
- 50: Years served on appropriations committees (since 1959)
- $3.7 billion: total West Va. pork from 1991 to 2009
- $2.6 billion: total West Va. pork from 2000 to 2009
-
$1.2 billion: total projects added in the Senate from fiscal 1995 to fiscal 2006. (Projects that can most likely be attributed to Sen. Byrd)
-
$382 million added by Sen. Byrd in 2009
In a It’s a Wonderful Life type of scenario, taxpayers can only dream of how different government spending and pork-barrel politics would be if Sen. Byrd was never elected.
Filed under: Appropriations, Budget, Earmarks, Pig Book
[...] hawks also criticize Byrd for the billions in targeted projects he secured for this state over a near half century on [...]