WASHINGTON — Fiscal conservatives in Congress won a rare victory Wednesday when lawmakers scuttled plans to spend $230 million to help build "the bridge to nowhere," a span that would lead to an Alaskan island populated by about 50 people.
The money — championed by Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, the powerful head of the Senate Appropriations Committee — was earmarked to help construct a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island in the Alaskan Inland Passage in the southeastern corner of the state. A ferry boat now provides transportation between the two points.
Lawmakers in the House and Senate decided to drop the project after it was derided by critics as "pork-barrel spending" on "the bridge to nowhere."
They also decided to axe $229 million for a bridge between Anchorage and the sparsely populated Knik area of Alaska. That span has been named "Don Young's Way" after Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, who, as chairman of the House Transportation Committee, has helped send federal dollars to the bridge.
Under a compromise transportation spending bill, Alaska would still get the federal dollars — but the money would not be specifically designated for the two bridges. As a result, Alaskan lawmakers and other officials would decide where to spend the money — and they could opt to fund other transportation projects.
Stevens on Wednesday blamed weeks of bad publicity for the decision by House and Senate lawmakers to drop the bridge projects. Stevens said his colleagues asked him in the midst of the outcry, "What are you going to do about this?"
A flood of newspaper and magazine editorials attacked the projects, and they were lampooned on Comedy Central's "Daily Show" on cable TV.
Budget hawks in Washington and some Alaska residents said other projects around the nation were more deserving. Critics suggested using the dollars to help rebuild the hurricane-ravaged Gulf coast.
"It was a symbol of federal spending" that's out of control, said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. "There's not going to be a lot of tears shed for the bridges to nowhere."
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said, "It became a symbol of bad public policy."
Stevens had argued that the bridges were needed to spur economic development on Gravina Island and in Knik. The Gravina Island bridge is not a "bridge to nowhere," Stevens said Wednesday. "It's the bridge to the future."
When Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., tried unsuccessfully last month to cut funding for the two bridges, an angry Stevens declared that he would resign his Senate seat if the bridge funding was dropped.
On Wednesday, Stevens said he didn't plan on leaving the Senate after all.
"I said I'd resign if they took the money from our state," Stevens said, noting that Alaskans will still see the federal dollars — even if they aren't targeted for the bridges.
In Congress, lawmakers have always had a penchant for earmarking federal dollars for projects back home, a proven way of appealing to voters.
Fiscal conservatives celebrated their victory.
David Williams, vice president of the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste, said the move is a sign that Congress will yield to grassroots criticism.
"People sit at home and say, 'Why should I call my member of Congress, why should I (care) when they're going to do the same thing they've always done?' " Williams said. But on Wednesday, he said, "two of the most powerful people in the House and Senate basically succumbed to a great grassroots effort."
Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., a fiscal conservative, said the decision to drop funding for the Alaskan bridges was a good start "but we've still got over 5,800 earmarks to go."
The transportation bill signed by Bush in August was estimated to contain more than $24 billion in earmarked spending specifically requested by members of Congress.
Although the bridges have "become a symbol for the fiscal excess in the transportation bill," Flake said, "there are thousands of earmarks in the bill that are just as excessive."
The federal budget deficit has swollen to historic proportions because of spending on the war in Iraq and, most recently, on helping the Gulf coast rebound from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The federal deficit was $319 billion on Sept. 30 — the third highest recorded. It is likely to soar to $400 billion during the current fiscal year.