The Virginian Pilot (June 26,2009) reported that Congressman Glenn Nye, D-2nd District of Virginia, authored and passed an amendment to the 2010 $680 billion defense appropriation bill that cancels spending $46.3 million to dredge the harbor at Mayport, FL. The purpose of the dredging was to prepare the Mayport harbor to receive a new carrier, which the Navy had previously indicated they might transfer from Norfolk (Nye’s District) to Mayport, next year. Nye said that the amendment was not a hard sell in the house: “I think we had the power of logic on our side.” Nye, and his two republican co-sponsors, asserted that it does not make sense to authorize spending money for the dredging when the Navy has yet to definitively decide if it will deploy the carrier. Let's see ... if the port were dredged, that might favorably influence the Navy to redeploy the carrier, don't you think? Its also true it is not in Norfolk's interest to do so.
I find it amazing that in the case of the carrier -- which represents millions of dollars of revenue to the local economy – that the congress will delay spending money until it has a plan. But, in the case of bailouts, energy policy, and healthcare, congress is willing to spend trillions of dollars before any plan is in place.
The difficulty appears to be determining when logic is on your side.
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