Word: kirwan
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...mighty chorus of "ayes" echoed through the House chamber. The "ditch" is a projected 120-mile waterway that will connect Lake Erie with the Ohio River at a cost estimated as high as $3 billion. The project has a flock of critics. But its sponsor is Ohio Democrat Mike Kirwan, 79, the Congressman responsible each year for doling out some $4 billion in pork-barrel projects to his colleagues, and most House members would sooner abandon Panama than damn Kirwan's canal...
Last week Kirwan's annual public-works appropriations bill sailed through the House on a 354-to-25 vote. Not a dollar was put into or subtracted from the legislation as it was reported out by his Subcommittee on Public Works Appropriations. Since "Big Mike" likes to keep all House members happy, every state had at least one slice of bacon. But Kirwan was undisguisedly most elated about his own project. "This is going to be the greatest canal," he bragged, "in the history of mankind...
Roughhewn, Pennsylvania-born Michael Joseph Kirwan dropped out of school after the third grade and followed his coal miner father into the pits. Later, he worked on oil gushers, farms and railroads...
...Tank. In 1937, at the age of 50, Kirwan came to Washington from Youngstown, elected to the congressional seat once held by Presidents James Garfield and William McKinley. Despite his double negatives and other grammar gaps, he was re-elected 14 times, thereby earning enough seniority on the Appropriations Committee to become the House's undisputed Prince of Pork. Kirwan is never loath to combat a political foe by lidding his barrel. Four years ago, when Oregon's Senator Wayne Morse voted against a $10 million aquarium for the District of Columbia-a pet Kirwan project-Mike simply...
...know where some get this information that there is going to be any great difficulty this year," the President told reporters. "I guess it must be the wish is father to the thought, or maybe you people promote some of this doubt." Ohio Representative Mike Kirwan, 79, longtime chairman of the Democratic House Campaign Committee, was less sanguine. "We've got a job on our hands this year," he warned. "Barry Goldwater isn't running. You'll need courage. So you had better say your catechism and get it in good shape...