Hold the bacon

While visiting Northeastern Pennsylvania last week, Sen. John McCain was asked by reporters how he would square his promise to cut pork with the public's expectations that their lawmakers bring home the bacon.

It's very simple, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee responded. "I'm telling them that for the first time they'll have a level playing field." Specifically, that a "bridge to nowhere" will go nowhere, as would grotesque monuments to lawmakers' "legacies."

Funding proposals would compete fairly and openly, he said. "There are projects here in Pennsylvania that would be fully funded," Mr. McCain continued. "There's also some pork-barrel projects that would never be funded and should never be funded."

What must change -- not just in Washington but also in Harrisburg -- is the bacon mind-set.

For precious little meat -- say, funding to renovate an existing highway bridge -- there's an awful lot of fat in lawmakers' funding "priorities," which typically are nonessential, oftentimes counterproductive (as in the state's "economic development" escapades) and are by no means constitutionally prescribed.

The result is the transfer of wealth from taxpayers to politicians, who, without mandate, determine how your money is best spent to curry political favor. It's outrageous and it must stop.

The sooner on Capitol Hill and Harrisburg, the better.