If you thought you’d heard it all, the Republican Study Committee yesterday revealed that Rep. Shelley Berkly (D-NV) requested a $200,000 earmark for the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy in Las Vegas, NV. The academy, whose website is inactive, was established in 2001 as a tuition free charter school for local "at-risk" children. While I’m sure this is a well-intentioned program, is it really the place of the federal government to subsidize a celebrity’s pet project? The last time I checked, Agassi was not struggling to make ends meet (in 2004, Forbes Magazine named him #27 on its list of richest people under 40, worth $162 million.) If Agassi wants to help "at risk" youth, more power to him, but should he be passing the bill to taxpayers? This earmark, like the rest of the roughly 1338 earmarks in the Labor-HHS Appropriations bill, needs to be stripped, and it’s up to my colleagues in Congress to do it. They must decide whether to continue their out-of-control spending or to restore fiscal sanity to our government. The ball’s in their court.
