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Thursday, February 26, 2009

Bushels of Bibles for Pennsylvania Lawmakers

Mario Cattabiani has a story in the Philadelphia Inquirer on the cost of new Bibles (and other holy books) for lawmakers to be sworn in on - $13,700.

House members got to pick from more than a dozen choices, ranging in price from $30 to $90. Each was embossed with the lawmaker's name at an additional cost of $15 per book, according to public records. ...

State Rep. Chris Ross (R., Chester) got a copy of the Quran. He said yesterday that he took the Jan. 6 oath on his own Bible, but ordered the Muslim holy book because he had always wanted to read it.

State Rep. Dan Frankel also got a Quran, but it was an ordering mistake. He traded it in for another copy of the Torah - the sixth he has received from taxpayers since first being elected in 1998.
I filmed a clip for CBS 21 on this story as well.

This is hardly the only example of taxpayer funding to be used to fund the personal libraries of Pennsylvania lawmakers. Rep. Mark Cohen bought over $30,000 in books at taxpayer expense over three years.

Lawmakers make the point that is a "small ticket item" in a $29 billion budget, and they'd be right. But as we have pointed out, there are hundreds of "small ticket items" in the budget, costing taxpayers millions (or billions, depending on your cutoff point). Spending like this makes it hard to justify why Pennsylvania needed/deserved a bailout from federal taxpayers.

Indeed, our latest report, Government on a Diet: Spending Tips 2009, identifies close to $5 billion in wasteful state spending. Ceremonial bibles are not specifically identified, though legislative funds are, under the category "Self-Service Government" - extravagant examples of spending that benefit lawmakers/government officials, not the general public.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Some lawmakers collect $30,000 a year in per diem payments even though their hotel bill is only 1/4 that much, $50,000 on public service announcements that are really taxpayer funded political commercials, and $20,000 on newsletters that are taxpayer funded political campaign flyers. How about cutting some of that rather than the word of God.

Nathan Benefield said...

How about cutting both, along with many, many more? Those are all products of the same culture of spending in Harrisburg.

Anonymous said...

Right on Nate! Liked the video clip.