Drunk Ted gets zinged over the Big Dig

Ted Kennedy has been wallowing in his bloated self-regard lately, castigating Republicans for failing to move fast enough on the minimum wage bill working through the Senate. We’re an evil lot, fulminates Ted, brimming with “hostility to working families.” The holdup is that Senate Republicans want to attach tax breaks to small businesses which would be adversely affected by the wage increase. How much would such a tax break cost? Senator Jim DeMint demonstrated:

Then Senator Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican and a leading critic of wasteful government spending, brought to the Senate chamber a poster-sized chart depicting two piles of cash.

One pile, labeled $8.3 billion, was the value of small-business tax cuts that Republicans want to include in a minimum wage bill. The other pile, slightly larger, representing $8.5 billion, depicted the federal contribution to a certain controversial public works project in Kennedy's home state.

"This is just a chart that compares the amount of what some of us would call pork-barrel spending, what we call the Boston Big Dig," DeMint said. "The federal government's part of bailing this out is $8.5 billion."

He said that $8.3 billion in tax cuts would help create jobs for thousands of workers across the country.

DeMint's stunt speaks to the lingering resentment in Congress over the Big Dig, the massive construction project with a runaway budget that cost federal taxpayers $8.55 billion before lawmakers shut off the money spigot in 2000.

Yeah, now I have to pay for it. Thanks Ted!