President George W. Bush is saying he will rebuild America's Gulf Coast - a job that may ultimately cost nearly $200 billion:

President Bush is right. The question is what spending are we willing to cut to pay for it?  While Hurricane Katrina victims along the Gulf Coast are waiting for aid from the federal government, here are some of the goodies others are getting in a $286 billion transportation bill, President Bush signed just six weeks ago.  The transportation bill contains more than 6,000 pet projects for Members of Congress:

• $231 million for a bridge in Alaska named for Rep. Don Young (R-AK) connecting Ketchikan to an island inhabited by 50 people.
• $207 million for building the proposed Prairie Parkway, a road in the district of House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL).
• $100 million to study a transit project linking Detroit and Ann Arbor.
• $50 million to rebuild a road in Montana's Glacier National Park.
• $3 million for an Alaskan documentary.
• $3 million for dust control mitigation on Arkansas rural roads.
• $2.3 million for landscaping along the Ronald Reagan Freeway in California.
• $2.6 million for the Daniel Boone Wilderness Trail Corridor in Virginia.
• $1.6 million for the Blue Ridge Music Center in Connecticut.
• $1 million for a wood composite project at the University of Maine; and
• $1 million to build a traffic circle in Vermont.

The appropriations bill now pending in the Senate that would finalize these projects also contains some $330 million in earmarks, including:

• $400,000 for an expanded kitchen at a café in Anchorage, AK. *$950,000 to build a Boy Scouts camp near Talkeetna, AK.
• $200,000 for the San Francisco Museum for the Old Mint Restoration project.
• $600,000 for restoring the Fox Theater in Oakland, CA.
• $250,000 to help build an Easter Seals (not sure about this) facility in Georgetown, DE.
• $1 million for the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Plan in Idaho.
• $600,000 for Kentucky to develop a visitor center at Big Bone Lick State Park, and
• $200,000 to revitalize and rebuild Lancaster Square in Lancaster, PA.

Hat-tip to our research staff for digging out these examples.

These "earmarked" projects will cost a staggering $24 billion or nearly 40 percent of the amount Congress has set aside for the Katrina relief effort so far.

Yet, while President Bush is out there asking for cuts to "unnecessary spending," House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) is quoted in press saying that the transportation bill "is exactly the highway bill we need."

So the question is who is going to show some leadership and make the hard choices between that $231 million bridge in Alaska and relief for victims of Katrina?

President Bush and Members of Congress in charge of the appropriations process are supposed to make hard choices, not just dole out the goodies and be popular. We need some responsible leaders willing to say no to lawmakers with their hands out. The nation has greater needs now than pet projects in home districts.