People are trying to make a big story out of this

The Boston Globe
Kerry asks $20m for Kennedy institute
Fiscal groups criticize military bill earmark
By Bryan Bender
Globe Staff / September 25, 2009

WASHINGTON - A large military spending bill moving through Congress contains a little-noticed outlay for Boston that has nothing to do with national defense: $20 million for an educational institute honoring late Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.

The earmark, tucked into the defense bill at the request of Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, requires US taxpayers to help the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate realize its goal of building a repository for Kennedy’s papers and an accompanying civic learning center on the University of Massachusetts at Boston campus in Dorchester, next to the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum.

The item is drawing fire from fiscal watchdog groups, who assert that military funds should not be raided to pay for an institution that has nothing to do with improving military readiness.

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Kerry strongly defended the insertion of the $20 million earmark yesterday. He requested that it be included in the $360 billion defense budget, he said, to recognize Kennedy’s long tenure on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The institute will serve as a focal point for the late Massachusetts senator’s legacy, much as presidential libraries do. It will house Kennedy’s official papers and oral histories from the nearly half-century he served in the Senate. With a museum and exhibit space, it also will be dedicated to educating the general public, students, teachers, new US senators, and Senate staff about the role and importance of the Senate in American political life. The institute plans to host an annual “Summer Senate’’ for high school students from across the nation.

The $20 million earmark would cover as much as 40 percent of the institute’s initial fund-raising goal.

Beyond raising questions about the practice of slipping earmarks into bills in Congress, the provision also presents a potential ethical question for Paul Kirk, the longtime Kennedy aide Governor Deval Patrick appointed to fill the late senator’s seat yesterday.

Kerry and other senators defend the earmark by citing Kennedy's long tenure on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The Kennedy Institute earmark is but one of hundreds of such measures in the defense bill that would divert more than $2 billion in spending from the Pentagon to other purposes.

We are in the middle of a war, one that, in Afghanistan, is in need of greater resources, not fewer. Our troops should get these funds, not the Kennedy Institute. The last time we checked, there were no Taliban raids in Dorchester.

If Sen. Kerry thinks American taxpayers should help pay for a temple to Ted Kennedy, let him file a bill seeking that appropriation on its own merit.

Get this boondoggle out of the defense bill.