Our new 111th Congress is in session, and straight away it has taken bold action to show us how serious politicians were about all those promises of change. Its first order of business: a measure to suppress energy production in Wyoming, build an extravagant road to nowhere in Alaska, and blow $1 billion of our hard-earned money defending the interests of 500 salmon in California. The omnibus lands package includes:

• A provision that takes about 8.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 300 million barrels of oil out of production in Wyoming, according to the Bureau of Land Management. The energy resources walled off by this bill would nearly match the annual production levels of our two largest natural gas production states — Alaska and Texas.
• $3 million for a "road to nowhere" through a wildlife refuge in Alaska.
• $1 billion for a water project designed to save 500 salmon in California. At this price, each salmon would be worth far more than its weight in gold.
• $3.5 million to help celebrate the 450th birthday of St. Augustine Florida, in 2015.
• $4 million to protect livestock from wolves that Congress helped reintroduce into the wild.
• $250,000 to help bureaucrats decide how to designate Alexander Hamilton's boyhood home.
• $5 million on botanical gardens in Hawaii and Florida.

The actual change will come in the near future, when this ongoing profligate moonbattery presents us with a choice of national bankruptcy or Weimar Republic–style hyperinflation.

A more sensible generation would have dragged most of these clowns out of the Capitol by their ears for a tarring and feathering. But then, a more sensible generation never would have elected them in the first place.

On a tip from V the K. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.