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Bishop to keep district projects

• A member of the House Appropriations Committee, Albany's Sanford Bishop defends the budget line-items he secures for the Second Congressional District.

Susan McCord

ALBANY — As four north Georgia Republicans pledge to give up pet spending requests for their Congressional Districts, U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop says he’ll keep his district projects.

From $94,000 for at-risk Lumpkin youth to $1.6 million for a new center for Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital, the federal fiscal 2008 budget was rife with millions in line-item appropriations earmarked by the Albany Democrat for the Second Congressional District.

All marked with Bishop’s name, the appropriations included a half-million for educational programs partnering Albany State University, Darton College and Albany Technical College. Another $245,000 was earmarked for a new senior center in Albany. A few million more, marked with the names of Bishop and Georgia’s senators, Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss, are designated to fund public and private defense spending projects at MCLB.

“I’m perfectly comfortable discharging my constitutional responsibility,” Bishop said, “to appropriate funds for the public good and the public welfare.”

The four Georgia Congressmen — Reps. Paul Broun of Athens, Nathan Deal of Gainesville, Tom Price of Roswell and Lynn Westmoreland of Grantville — said they will forgo earmarks for at least one year, giving up a perk to regain trust.

“People around this country are looking for a change in how government does its business,” Broun told the Associated Press.

Though he’s not one to “typically spout partisan politics,” Bishop said the gesture was sour grapes.

“Because they cannot control where the money goes,” Bishop said of the four relatively new members, Republicans in a Democratic-controlled House, “it doesn’t amount to anything but political gamesmanship, to compensate for their inability to exercise the same control as they had before.

“If we have to depend on some ... bureaucrats to fund what we need to be funded we may be waiting until hell freezes over. They don’t know where south Georgia is.”

Bishop spoke from his vehicle after meeting with officials from Marine Corps Logistics Base-Albany, the Albany Chamber of Commerce and General Dynamics at MCLB Monday in an effort to connect more federal defense contracts with Albany, and “also as a byproduct, increase the tax base and economic activity in the Albany area.”

It was an earmark, not a request by the Bush administration that funded a fix for deficiencies at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and the list goes on and on — food safety, immigration, housing — said Bishop, whose Web site includes applications for funding.

Under new ethics rules, each earmark request includes a signed statement declaring that the member of Congress has no financial interest in the funded project.

“The administration has under requested everything except the war budget, and that funding was requested from borrowed funds,” he said.

“It is unfortunate that the American people have to tighten our belts, when we have no limits on the amount of money that’s being spent in Iraq.”

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

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