Photo Credit: The Washington Post

Washington DC is rolling in pork. We don’t meat all those BBQ ribs consumed at Super Bowl Parties (Who Dat?!).

No, we are talking about pork-barrel spending. That’s when politicians grab government funds for pet projects in their congressional districts.

Now, to be fair, every politician does this. If congress folk bring home the Bacon (hence the term “Pork”) to their district voters love ‘em for it. Who doesn’t like somebody else’s money being spent on them?

But there are some in Congress who are artfully abusing working this system. The most notorious example might be Alabama Senator Richard Shelby’s $40 billion pet project (yes, that is Billion with a B).

His local project  wants to take taxpayer money to create air-to-air refueling tankers and an explosive testing lab for the FBI (let’s hope the the exposive testing does not take place inside the fuel tankers).

Okay…maybe the USA needs these projects…but Senator Shelby has a curious way of convincing opponents to support him: he is using BLACKMAIL.

The powerful Senator has decided to block any of the Obama administration’s nominees (and there are loads) until he gets his Mega Billion Payout.This sort of “blanket hold” is legal according to congressional rules, but has never been tried before in this way. Ezra Klein of the Washington Post explained the idea of a “hold” in an easy-to-understand way:

The Senate generally uses unanimous consent agreements to set the rules for a bill or a nomination. A hold, in its simplest form, is a promise to object to unanimous consent…That’s why holds are effective on bills and nominations that people don’t care about: The majority doesn’t want to waste that much time breaking the obstruction of the minority.

As a U.S. Senator, I believe that the review of judicial nominations is one of the most important responsibilities of the Senate, and I firmly believe that each of the President’s nominees should be afforded a straight up-or-down vote.