The photo of Congressman Rick Larsen standing with our county council members at Zylstra Lake as they boast and celebrate the $5,280.000 in federal tax money appropriated for a recreation trail really struck me.

It elicited an image of a hardworking nurse in Alabama, or a small business owner in Nebraska, or a single parent in North Dakota who are all watching their rightfully earned livelihood being seized by their own government to fund frivolous projects in parts of the country they have never even heard of. As Americans struggle financially wondering how to pay for food, heat, rent and insurance, our elected politicians, wanting only to make themselves feel useful, earmark billions of dollars for thousands of unnecessary pet projects and studies…..7200 of them most recently.

Workers in this country make sacrifices everyday deciding between what is a want and what is a need in their lives. Is it really too much to ask our elected public servants to do the same when spending our money.

The photo of Rick, Christine and Cindy contemplating how to spend money taken from the wallets of working people in all corners of our country does not inspire pride but deep shame. It is a moral failure on all of their parts to gleefully accept this money that individuals have to work so hard for just to survive. It demonstrates the entitlement of government officials abusing their positions punishing the many for the good of a few.

Lauren Cohen,

San Juan Island