One person's pork is another's indispensable service.

Nowhere is that more true than with the Essential Air Service, a program by which U.S. taxpayers subsidize the cost of air travel in and out of some of the nation's most remote rural areas.

The Associated Press has taken a look at the program and reports some interesting facts.

An excerpt:

Some of the subsidies, to places like Ely, Nev., Cape Girardeau,Mo., and Havre, Mont., are eye-popping.

Ely, in Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's state, leads the pack with a $4,500 per passenger subsidy, according to new data from the Senate Appropriations Committee. Just 414 people flew out of Ely last year. That's 0.7 passengers per flight, which means that some planes fly empty of passengers.

For Havre, each of its 359 passengers - 0.6 passengers per flight - received an almost $2,900 subsidy. Double it for a round trip ticket.

No matter. On Thursday, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved $175 million for the program, a $39 million increase from current funding. Congress initially provided $123 million in rural air subsidies this year, then added $13 million more as costs spiraled.

 

For years, these subsidies have been attacked as wasteful. But as AP reports, they persist because of the continued support of lawmakers, especially in the Senate, since every most state has rural areas, more or less.

And the air travel subsidy is just one of several important subsidies to benefit rural areas. There's the Universal Service Fund which subsidizes telephone service in rural areas.

The $787 billion economic stimulus contained more than $7 billion to deploy broadband in rural and other underserviced areas.

Historically, rural electrification and the interstate highway system were other forms of subsidies to rural areas.

The notion of taxpayers in urban areas subsidizing services to those in rural areas may seek quaint, especially in a time of expanding federal deficits. But such subsidies are as American as apple pie. Which is why their critics will find it very difficult to kill them.