A few years ago the little fishing village of 8,000 people, which is famous for its biblically proportioned rainfall and plentiful supplies of king salmon, became the proud host of a new airport. It is not exactly the busiest airport in the world — a mere eight flights take off and land each day. But it may be one of the most picturesque and it is certainly one of the most convenient. To get from the village to the terminal on a neighbouring island, passengers take a seven-minute ferry ride across the Tongass Narrows.

This week President Bush signed into law a Bill that authorises more than $200 million (£110million) for the construction of a road bridge between Ketchikan and its airport.

Gold has not been discovered in Ketchikan. The town is not about to host a major international sporting event or construct some vast military base.

The sole reason Ketchikan is about to get one of the largest and most underused bridges in America is that Don Young, the local congressman, is the chairman of the US House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure committee. The main purpose of the bridge will be the building of it — the diversion of federal taxpayers’ money to the local community.

This massive and otiose improvement to Ketchikan’s infrastructure was not the only project that Alaska won in the Highway Bill. It also included another bridge, to be called, self-effacingly, Don Young’s Way. And, in a nice touch, in drawing up the measure, which is to be called the “Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act — A Legacy for Users”, or SAFETEA — LU, Young even had the acronymic suffix added in honour of his wife, who is called Lu.

Thanks to the Bill, communities across the country are about to be showered with what Americans call pork — short for pork-barrel spending. The term originated from a pre-Civil War practice of distributing free pork to slaves from large barrels.

This is not a Keynesian exercise in regenerating impoverished communities — most of the beneficiaries are already thriving.

It is instead an example of America’s law-making at its worst, displaying a Congress that acts as a mechanism for elected politicians to bribe their constituents with taxpayers’ money, thus ensuring their own re-election.

There is nothing new about this. Every year congress passes spending Bills crammed with pork. But the signs are that the politicians’ addiction to pork is now out of control.

This year’s Highway Bill contains more than 6,000 pork projects, about 10 per cent of its $286 billion total.

Tom Schatz is the president of the pressure group Citizens against Government Waste, those numbers have been steadily rising. “President Reagan actually vetoed a Bill that contained just 150 such projects on the grounds it was too wasteful,” he said.

The fiscal frenzy comes at a time when the US budget has gone from a surplus five years ago to a deficit last year of more than $400 billion. Though the deficit has declined a little this year, that is because of some once-only gains in tax revenues. Spending continues to surge.

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