Washington pols trim their Christmas tree with outrageous tax-funded goodies

When Washington politicians speak of a Christmas tree this time of year, they are not referring to an actual tree.It means they’ve loaded up a bill with another kind of “green,” the kind that’s decorated with money.The “bipartisan” bill passed just before midnight last Friday, minutes before a government “shutdown,” would be an embarrassment to anyone but the politicians who voted for it.Like Christmas, this scenario gets played out almost every year with no regard for the growing debt.The first bill was more than 1,500 pages.

Elon Musk denounced it and suddenly it shrunk to over 100 pages, but that was too little for the big spenders.What passed last week (118 pages) may take days to digest, but you can be sure of one thing: Pork is part of it.Always is.Rep.

Bill Posey (R-Fla.) has compiled a naughty list of misspending dating back to 2009.This is a tiny portion of a much longer list.Call it the “golden oldies” of spending, which is an addiction shared by members of both parties and will continue unless members enter an economic “detox” program.As The Bard noted: “What’s past is prologue.”More than $104 million went to the Aleutian Islands for a harbor and an airport in a town with no connecting roads and only 75 full-time residents.Remember the “bridge to nowhere”? That was an earmark of $223 million in 2004 for a bridge that was supposed to connect Ketchikan to Gravina Island, Alaska, population about 50.Nearly $50,000 went to the Hawaii Department of Agriculture to help support the cacao industry during the Hawaiian Chocolate Festival.

Chump change, I know, but, as they say, it’s the principle of the thing.An audit of the Department of Agriculture found around 300 employees diverted millions of dollars for personal purchases using government credit cards.Among those purchases were concert tickets to see Ozzy Osbourne, tattoos, lingerie, bartender school tuition, car payments and cash advances.The audit cost $100 million.Th...