Pork and spinach casserole

The House is expected to debate the Iraq war spending bill today, which includes freeze-related disaster assistance and also funds for California spinach growers. Some have called Rep. Sam Farr's effort to deliver aid to spinach growers a classic example of "pork" in DC. Here is the link to coverage of that story from The Monterey Herald.
An excerpt:

Rep. Sam Farr's effort to get $25 million in federal funds to help fresh spinach growers hurt by last year's E. coli recall of bagged spinach has drawn snorts of derision from a group against government waste.`Adding the money to an emergency appropriations bill earned Farr, D-Carmel, the dubious prize of "Porker of the Month" from Citizens Against Government Waste, a Washington, D.C., group that has tracked federal spending since 1984.
But pork, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, Farr press secretary Jessica Schafer said Wednesday.
And it's not pork, she said, to try to help spinach growers "with compensation for millions of dollars of losses to make it through to their next crop."
The spinach-relief money is like many funding proposals that are fattening the appropriations bill. Currently before the house, the emergency bill -- known as the U.S. Readiness, Veterans' Health and Iraq Accountability Act of 2007 -- is the primary vehicle to continue U.S. dollars for the Iraq war.


TK: If what Farr is doing is "pork," it is much less objectionable than "the bridge to nowhere" and other boondoggles perpetrated on the America people. Remember in 2005, lawmakers sought build a bridge in Alaska that would connect the town of Ketchikan (population 8,900) with its airport on the Island of Gravina (population 50) at a cost to federal taxpayers of $320 million, by way of three separate earmarks in a highway bill. Yikes! Rep. Farr is a miser in comparison.

Looking ahead, Robert Guenther of United said the Senate version of the EAT Healthy America bill should be introduced next week.