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Tue Apr 3, 2012, 02:14 PM Apr 2012

GOP effort to ax earmarks hits $150,000 for veterans’ museum

(AUDIO)

March 28, 2012 By O. Kay Henderson


Republicans in the Iowa House have voted against sending $150,000 in state gambling taxes to a Waterloo museum that would have used the money to record the first-person accounts of Iowans who’ve been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in the past decade. Representative Dan Huseman, a Republican from Aurelia, urged legislators to reject the proposal.

“I think it’s a great project. It’s very difficult for me to resist this…but I’m going to at this time,” Huseman said this morning. “It does not meet the definition of vertical infrastructure.”

Other Republicans say it’s part of an overall effort to eliminate so-called “earmarks” in the bill that divvies up over $190 million in state gambling taxes for a variety of other projects, like a new visitors center for the State Historical Building and $3 million for county fairs. Democrats argued the Grout Museum’s project was worthy of state support, too. Representative Deborah Berry, a Democrat from Waterloo, said the project has already recorded oral histories from older veterans in 68 of Iowa’s 99 counties.

http://www.radioiowa.com/2012/03/28/gop-effort-to-ax-earmarks-hits-150000-for-veterans-museum-audio/

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