Budget Priorities

Remember back in those long-ago days when people were really frightened about Saddam's nuclear weapons? Since he didn't have any ICBMs, the suggested threat was that he or his terrorist buddies would slip one into a cargo container, and blow it up once it got shipped through a US port.

Apparently, the Congressional leadership has decided that, since Saddam never had any nukes, we don't have to worry about anyone shipping nukes, bioweapons or chemicals through our ports, either. From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Nearly $650 million to increase scrutiny of containers shipping into Seattle and every other U.S. port was stripped out of a national security funding package moving through Congress this week in a move critics say makes the country more vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

Opponents of the $648 million for port security said it was too expensive and needed to be cut to satisfy President Bush's request that the supplemental budget for things such as the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina reconstruction be brought under control.

Careful readers may notice that the spending being cut as "too expensive" is measured in millions. The cost of the proposed estate tax repeal is measured in billions or even a trillion. Yet there are Republicans who are vowing to bring the estate tax repeal up again.

It's all about priorities.