By this point in our national government class I, and hopefully many others, have learned many new things about our government. Throughout this course, I’ve learned quite a few new and highly interesting topics. Some of these topics became intriguing to me due to the way our national government deals with our issues. In this passage, I’ll explain one of the topics in a lecture that really caught my attention.
A topic that we reviewed in class that continues to baffle me are the pork barrel projects. The pork barrel projects are a government appropriation, bill, or policy used to take the nation’s money and spend it on your district for your state. The projects consist of building things such as highways and bridges, or even research projects such as J.J. Pickle; when they do this it's a way to get their name across to the state that way you pick them when it comes to voting.
What really baffles me is how much money is spent on these projects. I mean, Alaska spent $10 BILLION dollars on a bridge… in Alaska… who lives in Alaska? What I’m trying to say is that, so much money shouldn’t be spent on something that is going to potentially be insignificant or not serve much of its purpose. If politicians, local representatives, national representatives, etc., want to provide name recognition that’s fine but if they want to spend billions of dollars just for a bridge that no one will benefit from then that is moronic. I think so much money should go towards things that will indeed matter to the public or things that will genuinely benefit the public. For instance, if there’s a school that is in serious need of financial help, well, why not help them? The representative attempting to get more votes can target an area in their district or state that is seeking attention. That is a positive way of attaining name recognition while also providing precise benefit the community.
It’s unfortunate that our government would rather spend their money on a project that is irrelevant or that will serve little to no use in the community. This makes it more apparent to the public that our nation would rather focus on an irrelevant issue rather than solve issues that actually seek attention. From my point of view, it seems that the public would rather create a billion dollar inapplicable issue rather than solve a long-term issue that continues to be ignored. It shows that our government chooses to focus on issues that are easier to tackle rather than concentrate on issues that really matter. It goes to show that our government only cares about themselves and only themselves. They care about name recognition in the voting booth so they can continue to serve for THEIR benefit, not ours, but theirs.
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