Congress drops plans for $230 million Alaska bridge

WASHINGTON — Fiscal conservatives in Congress won a rare victory Wednesday when lawmakers scuttled plans to spend $230 million to help build "the bridge to nowhere," a span that would lead to an Alaskan island populated by about 50 people.

The money — championed by Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, the powerful head of the Senate Appropriations Committee — was earmarked to help construct a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island in the Alaskan Inland Passage in the southeastern corner of the state. A ferry boat now provides transportation between the two points.

Lawmakers in the House and Senate decided to drop the project after it was derided by critics as "pork-barrel spending" on "the bridge to nowhere."

They also decided to axe $229 million for a bridge between Anchorage and the sparsely populated Knik area of Alaska. That span has been named "Don Young's Way" after Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, who, as chairman of the House Transportation Committee, has helped send federal dollars to the bridge.

Under a compromise transportation spending bill, Alaska would still get the federal dollars — but the money would not be specifically designated for the two bridges. As a result, Alaskan lawmakers and other officials would decide where to spend the money — and they could opt to fund other transportation projects.

Stevens on Wednesday blamed weeks of bad publicity for the decision by House and Senate lawmakers to drop the bridge projects. Stevens said his colleagues asked him in the midst of the outcry, "What are you going to do about this?"

A flood of newspaper and magazine editorials attacked the projects, and they were lampooned on Comedy Central's "Daily Show" on cable TV.

Budget hawks in Washington and some Alaska residents said other projects around the nation were more deserving. Critics suggested using the dollars to help rebuild the hurricane-ravaged Gulf coast.

"It was a symbol of federal spending" that's out of control, said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. "There's not going to be a lot of tears shed for the bridges to nowhere."

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said, "It became a symbol of bad public policy."

Stevens had argued that the bridges were needed to spur economic development on Gravina Island and in Knik. The Gravina Island bridge is not a "bridge to nowhere," Stevens said Wednesday. "It's the bridge to the future."