What's in a Building's Name? A Lot of Tax Dollars

March 21, 2007 — -- America is home to many monuments and great buildings that honor some of our great leaders, like Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

But lately, it seems like we've been lowering the bar. Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott has a lot of things named after him in his state: the middle school, the airport, the Trent Lott Center at Jackson State University and the list goes on.

West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd has even more named after him. We counted more than 30 buildings, a bridge and even a telescope.

And Byrd isn't at all embarrassed to have buildings named after him.

"I'm exceedingly proud and thankful that this has been accomplished; this is opening the land of promise, like the land of Canaan," he said at the opening of the Robert C. Byrd BioTechnology Science Center at Marshall State University.

But not everyone thinks this is a good trend. Dan Greenberg is an Arkansas state legislator who tried to ban politicians from naming buildings after themselves.

"This is a practice that's got to stop," Greenberg said. "For me, it just comes too close to using taxpayer money to build temples to living people."

This practice of naming buildings after public figures is relatively new. The Lincoln Memorial didn't appear until more than 50 years after Lincoln's death. The Washington Monument came 89 years after Washington's death.

"In the old days we had a tradition of waiting to judge a person's whole life before we named a building after them," Greenberg said. "Now we have this modern trend of … naming buildings after politicians while they're in the prime of life. And you know, that creates a problem. If we're gonna use taxpayer money to publicize ourselves, if we're gonna use taxpayer money to build temples to ourselves. … That's very dangerous."

Greenberg's former governor is Mike Huckabee, who's now running for president. Huckabee has nature centers and schools named after him. Even his wife has things named for her, such as the Mike and Janet Huckabee Lake.