When pork flies

There's a lot of chatter here in the District about slashing budgets and cutting waste from the Federal government. Well, we here inside the beltway couldn't agree more ... unless it somehow affects our livelihood or job security. So, we'd like to turn your attention away from the beltway to the small New Mexico town of Alamogordo.

While a passenger will pay about $200 for a flight between Albuquerque and Alamogordo, the federal government pays $3,623 smackers, according to the website, OhMyGov (which is awesome by the way).

The reason, says the Congressmen who love it so much, is that the government must subsidize flights to rural places no one really goes. It's called the Essential Air Services, and came about when the airline industry was deregulated to ensure flights would continue to places no one would want to fly because the routes aren't profitable.

Make sense? Only in a Helleresque Catch-22 way.

A look at the EAS website shows an abundance of spelling errors and confusing sentences, but beneath it all are the cold hard numbers. Those flights to Alamogordo and to other rural areas cost you about $133 million a year (the latest data provided was actually from a Bloomberg report, the website only shows budget changes thru 2003, when the subsidy was $127 million).

Those numbers don't include the proposed $55 million dollar boost the Obama administration sought to give the program in 2009, according to the same Bloomberg report. But Obama isn't the only one to blame: 22 Senators also signed on to defend the program.

So how many people are on the 12 flights per week from Alamogordo to Albuquerque?

Less than one per flight.

Maybe the new Congressmen on the Hill will find it in their fiscally conservative hearts to slash the funding of this program. Then again, maybe some day pigs will fly.