"Bridge to Nowhere" - The Final Word

This article at TPM is the final word on why Palin's infamous Bridge to Nowhere finally got canned. It's been explained elsewhere -- even elsewhere here -- but this is nice and tight. And it makes perfectly clear that it had nothing to do with Sarah Palin being against pork barrel spending. As Greg Sargent and Erik Kleefeld make clear:

It's bogus to say that Palin turned on the project because the costs ballooned. The real reason she came around to opposing it was not that the overall costs went up -- the project was always a boondoggle, and costs were always going up -- but that one particular element of the project's cost ballooned: The portion that Alaska would have to pay, instead of getting the money through federal pork.

In her statement finally ending the project, Palin explicitly lamented that fact. "Despite the work of our congressional delegation, we are about $329-million short of full funding for the bridge project," Palin said at the time, "and it's clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island."

As for the claim that Palin drove a stake into the project's heart, the project was practically dead already by the time Palin officially shut it down, as the non-partisan CQ's PolitiFact section pointed out. She shut it down after it became clear that Congress would no longer fund it -- meaning that Alaska would have to use its own $329 million to build it, thus leaving Palin no other choice but to shut it down.

Bottom line: Palin did not tell Congress, "Thanks, but no thanks," on the bridge. It was Congress who cut off the money to Alaska. Oh, and she didn't Say No To Pork, either -- when Congress wouldn't spend that money on the Bridge, Congress did allow her to keep it for other projects. And she did.

As one responder to the article points out, the Obama campaign should stop pointing out that "she was for it before she was against it." Rather, she was for it "until she had to pay for it." Indeed so.

9 September 2008

Addition: TPM now has a nice video out recounting the facts as well.