It's time for that annual ritual known as March Madness. No, this March
Madness isn't about college basketball. It's about how much money Congress
plans to attach to appropriations bills to curry favor back home with their
pet projects.
This is the Democrats' first opportunity now that they're back in the
majority to prove they meant it when they promised to do things differently.
This after 12 years of Republican control in the Congress and its failure to
do anything about the misspending it derided when Democrats ran the place
before.
My favorite Washington watchdog group, Citizens Against Government Waste
(CAGW), has just published its annual "Pig Book," which chronicles some of
the most outrageous and wasteful government spending.
After seven years of record-setting pork, the "2007 Congressional Pig Book"
reports a decline in pork spending, thanks largely to Republican Senators
Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Jim DeMint of South
Carolina, who prevented nine appropriations bills from being enacted last
December. Some credit also goes to two Democrats, David Obey of Wisconsin,
who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, and the king of pork, Robert
Byrd of West Virginia, both of whom imposed a moratorium on earmarks for the
remainder of fiscal 2007.
This is a new fiscal year and pork to a member of Congress is like a
chocolate cream pie to someone on a diet. The temptation can be too great to
resist.
The biggest temptation to lard on more pork - and thus an indication of just
how serious the Democrats are about real spending reform - will come as soon
as Congress takes up the president's war supplemental appropriations bill.
President Bush has proposed $99.6 billion in supplemental spending for the
global war on terror and an additional $3.4 billion for reconstruction
related to Hurricane Katrina.
Brian Riedl of The Heritage Foundation says among the rumored add-ons are
between $5 billion and $7 billion in farm subsidies (even though farm
incomes are at record highs), $1 billion for the State Children's Health
Insurance Program, $1 billion for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance
Program (I thought Joe Kennedy and Hugo Chavez were helping with that) and
many more questionable expenditures that manage to find their way into
appropriations bills, even when there are supposed to be spending caps.
Congress brags about its spending caps, but it knows how to get around them.
It merely declares an "emergency" and spends the money on what it wants.