COW EMISSIONS CAN NOT STIMULATE THE ECONOMY

When are the gastronomical workings of livestock central to the national agenda? Well, these are strange times, and the nation's capital hesitates not a minute to embrace strangeness when it suits the aims of elected leaders. Quirky behavior is occasionally endearing but seldom when it involves tax dollars, errant national policies and mislabeled "emergencies."

Missouri Sen. Christopher Bond last week pointed out a bit of Washington eccentricity that would be funny were it not so arrogant and costly. As part of the Clinton's administration's Emergency Stimulus Package, $23.5 million was recommended for the Environmental Protection Agency to promote energy efficiency in the private sector and reduce greenhouse gas emissions that allegedly damage the Earth's ozone layer.

The economic stimulus proposal, as we have heard it espoused by President Clinton, is about the creation of jobs. Sen. Bond wanted to know, properly, how these measures accomplish that. In fact, the funding provided for energy efficiency would create at least 45 new jobs ... within the EPA. And the corporations the program targets are some of the biggest in the nation, with abundant resources and reasons to launch energy conservation endeavors without federal money committed to the cause.

And the EPA also finds itself needing a fuller understanding of how the methane produced by livestock might be better harnessed for the common good. The agency insists that institutional obstacles, insufficient knowledge and "lack of motivation" (as if working with cow gas weren't motivating enough) have "prevented this resource from achieving effective utilization." The EPA has been around this track before; in fact, a university in the home state of House Speaker Tom Foley fetched a $210,000 EPA grant to study cow belching. It should rightfully have been specified as pig belching, since pork is what this is really all about.

From the Show Me State, Sen. Bond asks logical questions: Why is this an emergency? How does this create jobs?

In fact, it isn't an emergency (the economy is recovering without any federal stimulus) and no jobs will be created (outside the government) from these programs. It is another case of useless federal spending.

If methane gas is a dangerous emission when discharged from cows, then another bovine by-product might describe some shenanigans that take place in the halls of Congress.