Jindal Spews About Volcanoes, Quiet on Mississippi River Projects

In his response to President Obama’s address to Congress last night, Bobby Jindal managed to irritate some folks living near Mount St. Helens by signaling out what he thought was wasteful spending: monitoring volcanoes. From his remarks:

[Congress'] legislation is larded with wasteful spending … [like] $140 million for something called “volcano monitoring.” Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C.

Obviously, the speech writer couldn’t resist the colorful flourish that the image of a volcano spewing s*** into the air would give to Jindal’s response. He got to use a clever line “monitoring the eruption of spending” and probably didn’t think anything more of it. The Mayor of Vancouver, Washington did give it some thought and was not pleased:

“Does the governor have a volcano in his backyard?” Royce Pollard, the mayor of Vancouver, Washington, said on Wednesday. “We have one that’s very active, and it still rumbles and spits and coughs very frequently.”

It does seem like an odd thing to single out monitoring of a natural disaster given the whole Katrina thing. Jindal comes across as fairly uncaring and tone deaf in his remarks. And there is the other little matter of the $500 million dolled out in the stimulus to strengthen the levees along the Mississippi river. I didn’t hear Jindal question that half a billion dollars (a bit more than volcano monitoring). Given the history of the levee system in Louisiana, I would take the money and shut-up, too. Too bad he can’t have the same sympathy for his neighbors in the Northwest.