Posted by Frank James at 3:37 pm CDT
Taxpayers for Common Sense issued a press release this afternoon with good background that explains some of the problems deficit hawks have with the $109 billion emergency supplemental spending bill the Senate passed today.
Look for House members who wind up negotiating with Senate conferees as they try to reconcile their different spending bills to go after many of the items cited by TCS in this press release.
May 4, 2006
SENATE PASSES EMERGENCY SPENDING BILL
Washington, D.C. – The following is a written statement by Steve Ellis Vice President of Programs, Taxpayers for Common Sense about the Senate passing the emergency spending bill:
Someone needs to remind the U.S. Senate that the country is swimming in a sea of red ink. Today, the Senate passed the $109 billion FY 2006 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Hurricane Recovery. The President asked for just over $92 billion, the House of Representatives responded with just under $92 billion. The Senate came back with more than $109 billion, ending up more than $16 billion over the original request.
In addition to blowing past the amount requested by the President and approved by the House of Representatives, the bill has become more about funding parochial projects under the guise of emergency spending rather than funding projects for Iraq or Katrina recovery. There is $4 billion in farm aid for virtually every weather calamity – drought, flood and fire, millions for the study of forensic sciences, new port security measures, and western drought assistance.
Even within the areas of the Global War on Terror and Hurricane relief there is a lot of questionable spending. $700 million to help move railroad tracks in Mississippi that have already been rebuilt – the Senate rejected an amendment to cut that. The President asked for $21 million in emergency spending for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration operations and research. The Senate responded with more than $1.1 billion – a 40% increase over the already approved FY06 appropriations of $2.7 billion. What does an extra billion get? Funding for sensors to give shippers real-time water level information at several ports, replacement of lost or damaged fishing gear, equipping fishing vessels with electronic log books, and assisting New England fisherman with the impacts of the toxic red tide outbreak, to name a few. Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-OK) lone success came from cutting $15 million from seafood marketing scheduled under this account.
Hurricane Katrina destroyed the Armed Services Retirement Home in Gulfport, MS. The veterans living there relocated to Washington, DC to the other ASRH located there. Earlier supplemental appropriations funded a study to see what was the need and size for these retirement homes that each currently house a few hundred of our veterans. This bill ignores the study, and just appropriates $176 million to rebuild the Gulfport facility, an amendment to cut this funding was withdrawn. There’s $80 million for new program to provide grants for restoring historic buildings. There’s even $594 million in the bill to fund “emergency” road repairs for disasters dating back to 2001.
As for the War on Terror section, well its scary in its own right. There’s $230 million to buy three new V-22 Tilt Rotor Osprey aircraft. This airframe isn’t even ready to be fielded and certainly isn’t battle tested. There’s more than $60 million in the bill for promoting democracy and free radio in Iran. One classified Air Force research and development program skyrockets from $47.5 million in the President’s request to $367.5 million, a 670% increase in funding! The Air Force was planning on shutting down the C-17 cargo plane line in 2007, but this bill keeps it open for at least another year. Why is this in an emergency supplemental? Because like much of the pork in the legislation, this proposal would have little chance of getting through the normal appropriations process.
There are a lot of head-scratchers in the bill. What is interesting is that in isolation many of the projects and funding increases seem to make sense and might be nice to have. However, we continue to run mega deficits of more than $300 million per year, and no matter how you slice it buying a few more aircraft you won’t have until years from now or throwing billions more at agriculture assistance or gulf coast fisheries does not constitute an emergency.
But because of the quirks in the budget rules, emergency spending is funny money. It allows for appropriators to ignore the budget caps while they continue to spend money we don’t have. It’s not often that taxpayers count on cutting spending in dark, smoke-filled conference committee room, but that’s our last best hope. That is, unless the President fulfills his promise, finds the veto pen and sends his first bill back to Congress.
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Comments
Another day of the pigs feeding at the trough of taxpayers dollars. Didn't the Republicans claim they were going to get their spendthrift habits under control? Did any Democrat object to any of this?
The whole lot of them should be tossed out the window and be allowed to land on their over-fed
bloated asses.
Posted by: johnf | May 4, 2006 9:25 PM
Just what is it with these idiots in the republican majority senate? Do they think we were all born yesterday? Trying to push billions in pork through on an emergency funding bill is just ludicrous. The Republican Party tries to sell themselves off as conservative, GIVE ME A BREAK. Let’s get these morons out of office while the middle class still exists. If we leave it up to the republican majority, there will be two classes in this country, upper 1% rich, and the other 99% poor, with no jobs, and no health care.
Posted by: Rory M | May 5, 2006 9:12 AM
Every House and Senate member won with a majority of votes, and most will win again. We deserve what we get.
Posted by: John | May 5, 2006 1:05 PM
The only thing we can do is vote them out of office in November. Until then they will continue to think that PORK is a good idea.
Posted by: Dottie | May 6, 2006 2:08 PM