Chris Columbus may find himself under the spending ax if one Republican bill in the House is successful.
In August, freshman Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) introduced a bill to repeal the Christopher Columbus Fellowship Act, killing funding for the program and saving $4.5 million over ten years.
The Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation is an independent federal government agency established in 1992 to “encourage and support research, study and labor designed to produce new discoveries in all fields of endeavor for the benefit of mankind.” The president appoints the board of trustees.
The program was established through the sale of commemorative coins, but when those sales ended taxpayers started picking up the tab.
“Just as Christopher Columbus and his crew threw unnecessary goods off their ship to withstand dangerous waters, so too must America stop paying for extraneous expenses that contribute to the national debt,” said Gosar at the time. “I came to Congress to cut spending and reduce the size of government. The Christopher Columbus Foundation, while an admirable program, costs the taxpayer money and its mission is not within the constitutional scope of the federal government.”
His bill arose from the GOP’s YouCut program that lets Americans vote each week on which cost-cutting legislation they’d like to see.
Extinguishing funding for the Columbus fellowship was also included in Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-Okla.) bill to eliminate funding for 85 programs, titled the Enacting President Obama’s Recommendations for Program Termination Act. Introduced in March 2011, that bill got stuck in the Appropriations Committee.
Gosar’s bill was sent to the Science, Space, and Technology and Education and the Workforce committees, where it won’t likely chart any new territory in the 112th Congress.
Having briefly perused the website, would it be too much too ask for a fellowship program named after a geographical explorer to have a little more explicit selection of things conducive to geographic exploration? Or do we think Earth is all there is, and its all been explored?
I mean, it’s like having the Thomas Edison Fellowship Award for Calligraphy and Social Justice. You’re just appropriating the name for something you wanted to do anyway.
Gotta cut somewhere. Follow this by cutting funding to anyone who protests on Columbus day.
These sorts of programs are for more than just another wasteful, probably extra-Constitutional federal program; they are the mother’s milk of leftist activism and finance the Left/Democrat shadow government. In ALL Democrat states and polisubs, these sorts of federally funded grant and contract programs, often with such vague statutory purpose that they can do anything, provide sinecures for Democrat/Leftist activists. HUD grant and contract financed planning entities lead the federal war on prosperous and crime-free suburbs. Commerce and Energy financed government agencies and quasi-governmentals interfere with business and energy development plans all over the Country. The Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education are outright money laundries to use grant and contract funds to further leftist agendae.
The whole bulking up exercise of the Left over the last couple of decades is attributable to the Democrat’s strategy beginning under Clinton of taking advantage of Republican porking proclivities to get “their share” of federal spending and funnel money to Democrat front groups out in the Country. Unions fattened up on federally funded training and apprenticeship funding. DHSS touted how it was contracting for all sorts of services to be provided in the “private sector.” First, if it relies almost totally on government funding, it ain’t private. Second, who do you think owns all those companies that do social services business with government and who do you think their executives and employees give money to? Republicans won the battle and lost the war on out-sourcing.
If we can get the Presidency back even if we don’t get the Senate we can begin to take meaningful steps to eliminate these programs that exist only to enhance Democrat/Leftist power. The Bush Administration couldn’t much be bothered with actually running the domestic government and Congressional Republicans weren’t inclined to deny their brothers and sisters across the aisle when they themselves had their hooves so far in the federal trough that only their curly tails were sticking out. Even without federal control, Republican governors need to do what Sarah Palin touted but didn’t actually have the guts to do herself; be mindful of the strings attached to federal programs. Not only do they use those strings to control state programs, the use those funds to feed the hands that bite us.
Good. Have to start cutting somewhere. How did Thomas Edison and Henry Ford do it without government subsidies?
One would think that by having Christopher Columbus’s name attached to it, that the move to cut this would pass with flying colors, although not for the same reasons.