My 2 Cents: Pork Slips Into Last-Minute Budget Deal

The Republican Party is being held most accountable for the government shutdown, and just to compound the political damage, one of the Republican leaders decided to slip money for a pet project into the emergency spending bill, passed last night to reopen the government.

Now Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell's staff says other senators decided to add in $1.2 billion for a dam in Kentucky and the President approved of it.

What a coincidence that it would be a dam in the home state of the lead negotiator for the Republicans? What are the odds, huh?

That's pretty hard to swallow that McConnell was just an innocent bystander, and that these senators from elsewhere deemed that Kentucky dam so important it had to be included in last night's 11^th-hour budget bill.

Sounds very much like a guy who thought we lost this fight, but the Democrats need me so I'm going to squeeze them for money for my state.

It stinks from the head down. For many in Congress this was a real fight for the future of the Country. And yet the ‘Kentucky Kickback' as it's being called cheapens the whole process. It's just sleazy. Why are we not surprised?