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Remember the absolutely critical Omnibus spending bill Congress muscled through at the end of last year? It was 4,000 pages that no one read that cost taxpayers $1.7 trillion.
In our Let's Cut Some Spending series, ForAmerica will chronicle parts of the 2021 and 2022 spending bills from a variety of sources that you probably don't know about - programs, grants, and spending of all kinds that should have never happened in the first place and many that are still happening.
Today's offering: Millions for weird museums!
Reason reports:
A perennial recipient of wasteful earmark funds, and one which the House Appropriations Committee has now banned from receiving them, is local museums.
In FY 2022, museum earmarks included $3 million for a decrepit prison in Illinois, $3 million for a Gandhi museum in Houston, and $3 million for a history museum in wealthy Palo Alto, California.
Gandhi was a great man, but is this really what American taxpayer dollars should be paying for? There is already a Gandhi museum in India and others around the world.
The FY 2023 omnibus package featured $750,000 for the Connecticut Trolley Museum, $2 million for Baltimore's National Great Blacks in Wax Museum, and $3.3 million for the Door County Granary in Wisconsin.
History is important, but not all of it deserves our tax dollars.
This is beyond ridiculous.
As a Connecticut resident and childhood fan of the Connecticut Shoreline Trolley Museum (a working trolley yard with multiple antique running cars) in my hometownown of East Haven i am delighted to hear that this decades old tourist destination in my state is slated to get some help...
That being said, NOW IS NOT THE TIME FOR SUCH AN EXPENSE.
The restoration and preservation of these historic coaches requires thousands of dollars to be spent on unique craftsman and specialize engineers. Much of the work is done by volunteers and much of the expenses are paid with from VISITOR'S DONATIONS and CONTRIBUTIONS.
But $750,000 dollars of TAX money at this time of poor economics is totally irresponsible.