Senate Continues Funding John Murtha's Private Airport

Last Tuesday's Wall Street Journal carried an unbelievable editorial concerning the Senate's continuation of funding for Pennsylvania Democratic Representative John Murtha's private airport in Johnstown, PA.

South Carolina Republican Senator Jim DeMint proposed an amendment to cease federal funding of the Pennsylvanian's boondoggle. Incredibly, it was defeated by a vote of 53-47, with Republicans Kit Bond (MO) and George Voinovich (O) voting against DeMint's amendment.

The Journal quotes DeMint as pleading,

"If we can't cut funding for this project, we can't cut anything in Washington."

So true. It's not like Murtha is even a Senator. But he evidently has enough chits collected among his own party's Senators, and, for some inexplicable reason, retiring Republican Senators Bond and Voinovich, as well, to manage to escape the budgetary knife.

For the record, the airport, with its three daily commercial flights- all to D.C.- has received in excess of $150MM over the last twenty years. Tickets for the flights carry an average $100 subsidy, paid for, of course, by you, the taxpayer.

The airport boasts an $8.5MM radar system that has never been used, and even managed to get $800,000 of so-called stimulus money earlier this year.

As the Journal noted, this 'airport in the middle of nowhere' may well become the Democrat's version of the infamous Republican "bridge to nowhere" of several election cycles ago.

Let's hope so. And maybe the end of Murtha's tenure, too.