Last night, Senators had a golden opportunity to get their spending priorities straight in light of massive budget deficits and the tens of billions needed to rebuild the Gulf. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), one of the Senate’s only voices for fiscal responsibility, presented his colleagues the chance to cut $75 million in funding for the two infamous “bridges to nowhere” in Alaska, and send that money directly to Louisiana to rebuild the Interstate 10 bridge over Lake Pontchartrain.

Unfortunately for taxpayers, we are stuck with a Senate dominated by spineless federal money-grubbers. A measly 15 Senators could muster up enough courage to vote for the cuts; the rest, perhaps too scared of a tongue-lashing from Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, voted to keep the bridges, two of the worst pork projects in recent memory.

It’s hard to believe that the American taxpayers wanted it this way. Letters flowed out of Alaska supporting the idea of giving back the money for the bridges to help the victims in the Gulf. Hundreds of newspapers across the nation joined the chorus of opposition to the bridges to nowhere. But when it came time to vote, the Senate acted like a pack of ostriches with their heads buried in the sand. The pleas of taxpayers died on the Senate floor and common fiscal sense was left out in the cold.

Perhaps this shouldn’t come as a surprise, because this has become the Congress that can’t cut. Despite a lot of talk lately on Capitol Hill about budget cuts, most of the ones proposed look good on paper but save nary a dime. But when given the real opportunity to save taxpayers $75 million, all the Congress’s rah rah for budget cuts disappeared.

And the actions of Sen. Ted Stevens, one of the biggest porkers to ever grace the halls of Congress, cannot be ignored. In a performance worthy of a daytime Emmy, Sen. Stevens threatened to resign from the Senate on the spot if his colleagues cut funding for the “bridges to nowhere” and indicated that he would have to be carried out on a stretcher if his precious earmarks were taken away. Though his strategy was ultimately successful, it’s shocking that Sen. Stevens would put his 37-year Senate career on the line for two of the worst pork projects in America.

Sen. Stevens felt that Alaska was being picked on by this amendment, and said he just wants Alaska to be treated like every other state. Give us a break. In terms of earmarks and federal funding, Alaska has no equal. In the transportation bill alone, Alaska got more than $1 billion in earmarks, third among all the states, and about $1,600 per capita (Vermont, a distant second, received $544 per capita in earmarks).

In total transportation funding, Alaska gets about $5.25 back for every dollar it pays in gas taxes, which is what funds the nation’s transportation program. This rate of return is way out of line with the vast majority of states. Sen. Coburn’s home state of Oklahoma, for example, gets 90.5 cents back for every dollar it pays in gas taxes, getting less so that Alaska can get so much more. This is not an issue of picking on Alaska. It’s an issue of being good stewards of taxpayer dollars and bringing some equity to the nation’s transportation funding. Please let’s treat Alaska the same as other states. It will be cheaper for all of us.

Sen. Coburn’s amendment offered an important symbolic opportunity for Senators to put our money where their mouths are. Instead, they simply showed us that the only spine they have is the one that protects parochial pork over the needs and desires of the taxpaying public.