Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today named outgoing Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) its December Porker of the Month choosing to honor him one last time for his lifetime of pork-barrel overachievement.

The Lang Report concurs with the CAGW and is bestowing Senator Stevens with its Golden Fleece Award.

"Think of this final Porker of the Month Award as a sort of 'swine song,'" said CAGW President Tom Schatz. "Sen. Stevens will be the subject of both encomiums and censure over the next few weeks and CAGW wanted to be sure that the taxpaying public doesn't forget his 40-year legacy of explosive earmarking.

What does it tell you about a person when the best thing you can say is that in his vaunted position as either Chairman or Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Committee over the years, Sen. Stevens scrupulously set the lowest possible standards of accountability in federal spending. By opposing every effort at increasing transparency and accountability, Sen. Stevens provided invaluable leadership of the Senate and his party..straight into single digit approval ratings and a political wilderness that could last for years." 

WHAT A GUY!

Sen. Stevens helped bring home to Alaska a total of 1,452 pork-barrel projects worth $3.4 billion between 1995 and 2008. Alaska has been the number one state in pork per capita every year since 1999 in CAGW's Congressional Pig Book.

NO WONDER STEVENS WAS RE-ELECTED UPTEEM TIMES, SERVING SINCE DECEMBER 24, 1968 MAKING HIM THE LONGEST CONTINUOUSLY SERVING REPUBLICAN IN THE SENATE!

Among his many career highlights, Stevens defended the now-infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" on the floor of the Senate in 2005 by threatening to resign his seat, saying he would become a "wounded bull on the floor of this Senate" and that he would have to be "taken out of here on a stretcher." Among his many honors, he managed to glean the "Cold Hard Cash" Oinker Award for collecting $165.7 million in defense pork in the 2008 Congressional Pig Book. He will also be remembered for such earmark classics as the $25 million for a supercomputer at the University of Alaska to study how to trap energy from the aurora borealis; $750,000 for grasshopper research; $500,000 for the Alaska Spruce Bark Beetle Task Force; $200,000 for the city of North Pole for recreation improvements; and $176,000 for the Reindeer Herder's Association.

SATIRICAL NOTE: To All Hustlers and Aspiring Scumbags – If you are looking to enjoy a life of public service while lining your pockets and enriching your friends and constituents, then the United States Congress is the place for you.