Highway (and other) robbery: when it comes to raking in the funds, no one beats Alaska.

IN October, Alaska Airlines ran a promotional deal that would sound odd to anyone unfamiliar with Alaska politics: "Alaska Airlines' popular Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) fares are now on sale, offering savings of up to 35 percent off the lowest everyday fares ..." Across the state, many other retail outlets are offering similar discounts. All are competing for the attention of Alaskans, who each fall receive a "Permanent Fund Dividend" check, paid out of the state's royalties on oil and gas. This year, the state will disburse roughly $510 million to Alaska's 600,000 residents, which works out to $845 apiece.

Meanwhile, Rep. Don Young, Alaska's lone at-large representative and chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, is coming under fire from conservatives in Washington for stuffing two bridges into the highway bill President Bush recently signed into law. Combined, the bridges will cost U.S. taxpayers $454 million--just slightly less than the amount Alaska will give away in PFD checks this year. One is designed to connect the town of Ketchikan, Alaska (pop. 8,000), to its airport on nearby Gravina Island (pop. 50), supplanting a ferry service that currently makes the trip in about seven minutes for a fare of $5 to $6. The other, "Don Young's Way," is literally a bridge to nowhere. The idea is to build a bridge between Anchorage and a small rural area called Point MacKenzie (pop. 111) in the hope that Point MacKenzie will grow into somewhere--a suburb of Anchorage (pop. 261,000).

Using Citizens Against Government Waste's definition of pork, Alaska ranks first in per capita pork spending. At $985 per resident, Alaskans received even more money in the form of federal pork this year than they will receive in their PFD checks. Some may find it puzzling that Alaska, which has no state personal-income or sales tax, can hand out millions of dollars in cash to its citizens and receive hundreds of millions of dollars in federal pork at the same time. How did a state that prides itself on its self-reliance and frontier spirit become so dependent on federal spending?

The answer, as people familiar with Alaska's political culture know, is Alaska's love-hate relationship with the federal government. "We're very much a red state and we're very much part of the western culture that hates federal control, yet we love federal money," Anchorage Daily News editorial-page editor Larry Persily says. "It's kind of like Alaskans want to go to bed with the feds but don't want to wake up and share breakfast with them."

To maximize their share of federal spending, Alaska has returned Don Young to Congress 15 times, and its senior senator, Ted Stevens, is the longest serving Republican in the U.S. Senate. Because of their seniority, Young and Stevens are in a position to fight hard for earmarks, and they do so in a way that CAGWpresident Thomas A. Schatz calls "unrepentant." Schatz says: "There's a manner in which Young and Stevens go about their business--they're both very tough, they take in a lot of money and give out a lot of money, and they're certainly not fiscal conservatives in terms of setting examples for their committees."

That's a major understatement. Here are just a few of the goodies Young and Stevens have steered toward Alaska in recent years: $1.8 million for berry research; $1.8 million for sea-otter recovery; $10 million for a psychiatric-treatment facility; $48 million in subsidies for the timber industry; and $500,000 to paint a giant salmon on an Alaska Airlines jetliner. Yet none of these projects compare to the pork Young and Stevens packed into the highway bill. A study by Taxpayers for Common Sense revealed that the $286.5 billion bill contained 119 special projects for Alaska, totaling almost $1 billion. Of the $24 billion worth of pork in the bill, Alaska got 4 percent.

Congress and President Bush share responsibility for letting such a pork-laden bill become law, but Young and Stevens are especially blameworthy. The bill exemplifies their attitude toward pork-barrel spending. When Young found out that Stevens had directed more pork to Alaska than Young himself had in 2004, the congressman famously told a group of Ketchikan Republicans, "I'd like to be a little oinker, myself. If he's chief porker I'm upset." After his highway bill passed Congress, Young told the Anchorage Daily News to expect more pork in the future. He compared it to hunting: "I'm always going to be looking for a bigger head."

Unrepentant indeed. After conservative Republicans in Congress started talking about rescinding some of the earmarks in the highway bill to pay for bridge repairs in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal floated the idea that Alaska should give up its now-notorious "bridges to nowhere." When a reporter for an Alaska paper asked Young what he thought about the idea, Young replied, "They can kiss my ear" and "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard." He noted his participation in a charity golf tournament that had raised $500,000 for victims of Hurricane Katrina. "I raised enough money to give back to them," he told the paper.

When I talked to a spokesman for Senator Stevens, she was no less clear in conveying Stevens's support for the earmarks. I asked her specifically about the two bridges: After all, with so much infrastructure needing to be rebuilt in Louisiana, doesn't it make sense to give back those earmarks? She objected, citing three reasons. First, she said, the bridges are not bridges to nowhere; they are bridges to economic development for two regions of Alaska. Second, because the federal government owns roughly 70 percent of the land in Alaska, the federal government should help Alaska develop the land that's still available. Third, Alaska is a young state and deserves more funding in order to catch up with the "lower 48."

To take these in reverse order: The third argument doesn't really pass the test of common sense. Alaska became a state in 1959, and has ranked in the top ten in per capita federal spending since at least 1981. That's a lot of catching up already.

Second, the federal government's obligation to Alaska is to make more publicly-owned land available for development, not to build bridges to nowhere. "The feds own a lot of the land and set the rules for the land, which angers us," Persily says. "Alaska is a resource-development state, so every acre that might have oil or gas or gold is a lost opportunity." Perhaps if the federal government started loosening its grip on Alaska by opening the Arctic Natural Wildlife Reserve to exploration, Alaskans wouldn't feel as though the federal government had an obligation to build bridges to their uninhabited islands.

Third, as noted before, Alaska's high current revenues from oil and gas have enabled it to survive without state personal-income or sales taxes, and also to give away hundreds of millions of dollars in dividend checks each year. Conservatives should consider Alaskans fortunate to live in such a favorable tax environment, and question the wisdom of letting the state rather than the citizens of Alaska spend the dividends.

But if a majority of Alaskans desire a pair of exorbitantly expensive bridges to enhance the local economy, they can and should find a way to pay for the projects themselves--instead of billing the other 49 states.

Mr. Spruiell writes the media blog for National Review Online.