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Refusing To Pay For Woodstock

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 29, 2007

In a rare display of sound stewardship of taxpayer dollars, the Senate removed a $1 million earmark from an appropriations bill.

The money was slipped into health-care legislation by Sens. Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer of New York to help build a Woodstock museum at the site of the 1969 week-long rock concert. When the pet expenditure was exposed to a roll-call vote, Senators euthanized it.

The death wasn't painless because Sen. John McCain made a campaign commercial out of it.

In a debate of Republican presidential contenders, McCain called the Woodstock gathering a 'cultural and pharmaceutical event' that he couldn't attend because 'I was tied up at the time,' a reference to his being a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

The Woodstock earmark is an example of the sort of bad lawmaking that has eroded public confidence in Congress. When presented with the choice of sending $1 million to museum that is being built anyway with private and state funds, or spend the federal money instead on a maternal health care program, 42 senators sided with Clinton and Schumer to help the museum.

It was only a coincidence, Democrats said, that a wealthy backer of the museum contributed to Clinton's campaign and to the Democratic campaign committee Schumer heads.

The whole spat is about politics, not a thrifty budget, argue Clinton supporters who point to rampant spending by Republicans. They're wrong that $1 million doesn't matter but right about free-spending extravagance.

The bill in which the Woodstock museum was hidden, the Labor-Health and Human Services-Education and Related Appropriations Act for 2008, includes 800 other earmarks that the Washington Times reports will cost taxpayers $400 million.

Both parties have taken to heart the advice of the flower children of the '60s: Go with the flow.

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