Recently, the government watchdog group, Citizens Against Government Waste, released a report stating "pork" spending in Congress has increased 46 percent since the last fiscal year. It says that since 1991, Congress has spent $119 billion in pork, and so far this fiscal year, Congress has approved $18.5 billion worth of pork spending. This organization defines pork as anything that meets at least one of the following guidelines: spending that is requested by only one house of Congress, spending that is not specifically authorized, spending that is not competitively awarded, and spending that is not asked for by the president.

This revelation really got me thinking (yes, to all you skeptics, I think quite a bit) about the whole conservative/Republican ideal of smaller government. It basically got me thinking that this idea of a smaller, hands-off government is a bunch of hogwash. The party that currently rules our country is not only calling for insanely low taxes, but they also claim to want a smaller government. My contention is that this rampant pork used by Republicans is in fact doing nothing to shrink the size of government. Rather, it is increasing the size of government to the point that we have Republicans acting like they're Democrats.

Now, American congressmen all figured out a long while ago that the best way to get re-elected is to ensure that their constituents are working. So, pork spending, which Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has done such a masterful job of bringing to the public consciousness, has become an American political way of life. Most congressmen have deduced that after they do enough back scratching, they can convince their colleagues to help them appropriate funds while they come up with funding for some meaningless project that will employ hundreds or thousands of constituents. Cleaning a statue, restoring a historical home, building a monument, or building the Bud Shuster Highway are all examples.

If people need more examples of the Republican hypocrisy regarding the party's promise of smaller government, just look at recent examples of pork. Senate Majority Leader, Trent Lott, R-Miss., earmarked $460 million that will be spent on a Navy amphibious assault ship. Of course, this would not have happened if it wasn't for the promise that the ship will be built in a Mississippi shipyard. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Ala., chairman of the Appropriations Committee, earmarked $60.5 million for various projects, one of which costs $4.4 million for sea lion recovery. That's right, folks, $4.4 million alone, of your hard-earned tax money will go towards some sort of sea lion recovery. Of course, the real modus operandi of this is to ensure that people employed by this will know that Ted Stevens is a man that looks out for them. Forget that it's a completely unnecessary appropriation. The other senator from Mississippi, Republican Thad Cochran, secured $27 million for various river projects. Now, just by scratching the surface these are three conservative, small-government Republicans who are using $547.5 million of tax money to fund their own political careers. Now, the flip side to this is that they are creating jobs but by spending this money on needless projects, they are doing nothing to reduce the size of the government. In fact, over the course of the Clinton years, six of which saw the "do-nothing" Republicans control Congress, government spending grew well over the rate of inflation.

For another example of this hypocrisy, recall the Reagan years. Democrats controlled the House of Representatives, but from 1981 to 86, Republicans controlled the Senate. Reagan's economic plan that became a colossal failure actually would have worked had it not been for the lack of fiscal discipline in Congress. Recently, people have come to realize that the deficits of the Reagan years were the fault of a spend-crazy Congress. Why is that? It is because both Republicans and Democrats refused to rein in government spending. During the Reagan years, as in the Clinton years, government spending well exceeded inflation. Once again, Republicans contributed largely to a betrayal of their promise of a smaller government. Lower taxes and more spending equaled massive deficits. While former House Speaker Tip O'Neill and the House Democrats must bear part of the responsibility for this, Republicans in both the House and Senate cannot shirk the blame.

And for further evidence of this contradiction of the small government doctrine, don't forget that Republicans support massive government spending in many areas. They support corporate bailouts. They support making abortion illegal that would require massive funding to regulate. They support cuts in minor programs, like school lunches, but they have no problems with building a massive, and mostly ineffective nuclear defense shield. Yeah, they believe in small government. Right, and I thought Carolina had a better basketball team than Penn State.

Now, I know there are people out there screaming about the transgressions of many Democrats. Therefore, I feel the need to point out that Democrats are not innocent either. They don't act with complete fiscal discipline. Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, a war hero who's been on Capitol Hill as long as Hawaii has been a state is a flagrant abuser of pork spending. But then the difference is that Democrats never claim to want small government. Quite the contrary. Democrats believe that the bigger the government, and the more spending it engages in, the better off we'll all be. Well, maybe not all of us. After all, we know how much millionaires need a tax cut so they can go buy that second home. It almost seems that Democrats can involve themselves in pork spending without violating their core principles.

To quote Malcolm X, "You've been hoodwinked; you've been bamboozled." It's time for us all to come to grips with reality and realize that smaller government is a dream and no more. We have a system of government that ensures that our government will always grow. That's the way that incumbent congress members stay in D.C. But I guess that as long as people are willing to believe what the Republican spend-o-crats say rather than what they do, things won't change.