According to the sources quoted in the Reuters article, she said she was all for building the bridge when she was running for office, but canceled the project once in office. Let’s just say that the people who supported the project in the state feel like they’ve been stabbed in the back.
Her first big speech with the whole country watching, and she gets a great response from the crowd of folks by donning the Responsible Spender robe. She told those congress critters, “‘thanks but no thanks’ on that bridge to nowhere.”
Except that Alaska still took the money. Congress had already removed the earmark, instead offering the funds for “transportation priorities.” Somehow I thought that “no thanks” would result in not yanking the funds out of Congress’ hands so fast the bills now have skid marks.
So, the money would be spent on other Alaskan transportation priorities. What priorities, might you ask? How about priorities like building a road to the bridge to nowhere? Sure, the bridge won’t be built, but you’ll get to the nonexistent bridge in half the time it would normally take if you are among the handful of people on Gravina Island.
Why are you being such mysogynistic haters and Obama lackeys? This is because she’s a woman, isn’t it? A tough woman who ain’t afraid to take not only her own life in her hands, but an unborn baby’s life as well. Who isn’t afraid to expose to the world her down to earth, everyday faults and foibles, and those of her minor children too! You ain’t never et a mooseburger, have you? Wall, there ya go. [Contemptuous sputtering noise with lips.]
ETA: Lest I be accused of going off topic, the foregoing paragraph represents the McCain campaign’s specific and precise rebuttal to the OP’s question, who obviously doesn’t put our country first.
You don’t really seem to understand how the whole transportation funding thing works. The transportation authorization bill originally contained the “Bridge to Nowhere” earmark. That earmarked part of the funds that were going to Alaska based on the transportation funding formula. It wasn’t extra money for the state. So when you remove the earmark the same amount of money goes to Alaska. The only difference is that Alaska transportation officials have the authority to spend that money as they see fit. It makes no sense to say they should have “refused” the mony. It’s money that goes to them, as it does every other state, based on the federal formula. It would have made no sense for them to turn it down.
In which case it makes no sense to claim you told Congress “Thanks but no thanks”.
Even less so when you publically lament that Congress wouldn’t give you even more pork to build the bridge and that’s why you need to cancel the project.
No, the people of the state can say that they don’t want that specific earmark. The Bridge to Nowhere was inserted by Stevens or Young (I forget which, although they both possibly cooperated on it) into the transportation authorization bill. Their colleagues in Congress generally defer to them as representing the interests of their state. However, if somone like the Governor says that this earmark isn’t desired, then it undercuts the home state delegation’s efforts to preserve that earmark.
So she’s being accurate. You can reject the earmark but that doesn’t mean you get less money.
Of course, this video shows that Palin has made it to McCain’s other “pork list.” Watch your back, Cindy - looks like John is considering another trade-in.
Then what was the point of even bringing it up if not to mislead people into thinking she had taken a principled stand involving some sort of sacrifice?
Contrast that with this statement, where she seems disappointed at not getting more *federal *support for the project:
So, earmarks don’t actually cost taxpayers anything, then, since they just redirect money already spent? How is cutting earmarks out of the budget going to help McCain pay for his tax cut then - not that the total is anywhere near the tax cut he is proposing.
Not to mention, given the power of the Senators in the state, why would they even bother to put the earmark in? If the state controls their share of the money, why get Congress involved at all?
So what’s the real deal with this? According to this article in the NY times, Palin had nothing to do with rejecting the bridge, as the earmarks had already been removed before she even got into office.
Sorry for replying to myself, but I missed the edit window.
I found the missing puzzle piece. Maybe the bridge is part of the standard funding, but the standard funding is way out of whack. A table here shows that Alaska gets back $6.60 for every dollar paid in federal gas taxes, twice as much as the next highest (DC) and seven times as much as California. I could see it if Alaska was poor and starving for resources, but given that they get a ton from oil, it’s hard to justify.
The other part of the story was how Stevens had a fit when there was a proposal to take money from the bridge and use it for Katrina relief.
Bottom line, it doesn’t take a lot of courage to say no to a politically unsupportable project when the result is more flexibility in using the money.
What I found pretty amazing was that, at the convention, they said that Palin became mayor because of the high taxes and government waste and she wanted to fix it herself. She increased the sales tax of Wasilla by 25% (going from 2% to 2.5%) and gave the town about 22 million dollars of debt when they had 0 debt prior to her becoming mayor. Why isn’t the MSM exposing these blatant lies?