Transportation Pork: Not just Alaska and Minnesota

And so it continues. Mark Tapscott at the Examiner points out a few outlandish earmarks in the preliminary Senate Transportation and Housing and Urban Development Appropriations bill for 2008. Among them:

• $3 million for bike trails in Illinois courtesy of Dick Durban (D-IL) and Barack Obama (D-IL).
• $200,000 for a downtown parking garage in Provo, UT from Orrin Hatch (R-UT).
• $200,000 to convert an old Las Vegas post office to a local history museum, from Harry Reid (D-NV).
• $250,000 to build a museum to promote tourism in…Peoria, IL, also from Dick Durbin (D-IL)
• $1,000,000 for a bike and pedestrian path in Baton Rouge, LA, from Mary Landrieu (D-LA).
• Unspecified amount to renovate and restore a local bank building to a museum in Suffolk, VA from John Warner (R-VA) and Jim Webb (D-VA). Hey, at least there’s bipartisanship involved!
• $200,000 to build a “multi-cultural” museum and community center in Beckley, WV, from Robert Byrd (D-WV).

Tapscott asks the pressing question: how many bridge inspections would $5 million worth of earmarks buy?