What is pork anyway?

Read the bill. John McCain jumped in the President's proverbial #%$@ because he has delivered a 2700 page Health Care Bill. So, read the thing! What's the problem? How many 12 year old Harry Potter fans have already read the last book totaling 800 or so pages three or more times? If you asked, they would tell you that they read it in three days! Sorry, John McCain, but the days of claiming that you have never turned on a computer and being proud of it are over.

The lawmakers complaining about a 2,700 page bill should be impeached. End of story. When it is your job to make laws, you do your homework. If going to the office on a weekend to read 2,700 pages is too much for you, quit your job. There is no excuse for complaining how long it is. I don't get it. All that I can do is hope that someone runs against you in the next election that is willing to do the job.

I've downloaded and looked over the entire document. It's interesting how certain politicians are saying that it's loaded with pork. I wonder exactly what each individual's interpretation of pork is. I wonder what the specific problems are for the people that haven't read it over. Let me give a short analogy of my interpretation, because most of the so called pork is stuff that we would be spending on in one form or another.

Let's say that you were going to be moving to a state that doesn't charge sales tax. Let's also say that you have a little money in your savings account. Not that the U.S. has money in their savings account, however, there are projected expenses either way. Would it be worth taking money from your savings account today, in order to save thousands of dollars in sales tax for tires, appliances, groceries, etc., If it were going to save at least 33% of your income for the next couple of years?

Not everybody shops like that. Not everybody has a savings account to draw from. Not everybody would buy in advance even if they did. Does that mean that the person that is willing to buy in advance is wrong? Or does that mean that they are making a mistake because tire prices might go down in the future? I can't even speculate on an answer.

I have prepared many million dollar budgets in my career, and I know that the best way to save money and to stay within a budget is to forecast far into the future. The best way to forecast the future is to take the statistics from the past and try to compare apples to apples.

It might seem like irrational spending to some people to speculate what the future might hold and to plan this far in advance. To me, it's well worth the risk to buy my tires now because, as we all have learned, we might not even have a job tomorrow.