Healthy Pork in Health Care Reform Legislation

Where in the Constitution does it empower the Congress to pay for jungle gyms, walking paths, or streetlights?

It doesn't. There is no enabling clause that permits the financing of farmers markets either.

But in the name of "health infrastructure," Congress is about to embark on a new spending spree of pork designed to "transform communities."

WASHINGTON - Sweeping healthcare legislation working its way through Congress is more than an effort to provide insurance to millions of Americans without coverage. Tucked within is a provision that could provide billions of dollars for walking paths, streetlights, jungle gyms, and even farmers’ markets.

The add-ons - characterized as part of a broad effort to improve the nation’s health “infrastructure’’ - appear in House and Senate versions of the bill.

Critics argue the provision is a thinly disguised effort to insert pork-barrel spending into a bill that has been widely portrayed to the public as dealing with expanding health coverage and cutting medical costs.

[SNIP]

But advocates, including Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, defend the proposed spending as a necessary way to promote healthier lives and, in the long run, cut medical costs. “These are not public works grants; they are community transformation grants,’’ said Anthony Coley, a spokesman for Kennedy, chairman of the Senate health committee whose health care bill includes the projects.

“If improving the lighting in a playground or clearing a walking path or a bike path or restoring a park are determined as needed by a community to create more opportunities for physical activity, we should not prohibit this from happening,’’ Coley said in a statement.

Good intentions, the cobblestones on the rocky road to hell.

Worse, when you get into the details of the legislation, it is clear that all constitutional safeguards are being tossed out the window. Again.

The Senate health panel’s bill does not specify how much would go to the community projects. A Senate staff member said the amount of spending will be left up to the Obama administration. A House version of the bill caps the projects at $1.6 billion per year and includes them in a section designed to save money in the long run by reducing obesity and other health problems.

It is not clear yet how the money would be allocated. The legislation says that grants will be awarded to local and state government agencies that will have to submit detailed proposals. The final decisions will be made by the secretary of Health and Human Services.

No specifics. Power deferred to unelected bureaucrats. Want to bet that the spending cap will disappear by the time the final bill is signed by President Obama?

That is, of course, unless we can stop the madness.

Or does anyone even care at this point?