It is considered crass to talk about money in the wake of a disaster but somebody’s got to do it.
I’m not hard-hearted. Like many of you, I am mourning the death of a treasured friend. Barbara Olson, who was in the plane that went down at the Pentagon, was dear to me. For two awful days I did not know if another friend, whose office was destroyed by that crash, had survived.
Make no mistake: I support spending whatever it takes on the relief effort in order to give aid and comfort to the victims and their families. I also support giving President Bush whatever it takes to take out those who are responsible for these dastardly deeds and that includes money to wage war on the countries who are aiding and abetting the terrorists.
That said, I must tell you that I was sickened by the actions of many of our elected representatives who were in front of the cameras, patting themselves on the back for putting partisanship aside and quickly passing a relief bill to provide the funds for these endeavors. That was a no-brainer! It is not hard for our elected representatives to spend our money.
However, it was upsetting, while at the same time touching, to see many average, well-meaning Americans saying, “I could really use that tax rebate check I received (or am about to receive) from the federal government, but I am willing to give it back to help see my country through this crisis.”
Can it be that so many of us have been so deceived by our representatives in Washington that we honestly think a country with 300 million people and a two trillion dollar budget can’t take care of this business without our puny little rebate checks? Have any congressmen and senators come forward and offered to give up their $5,000 pay raise, which was tucked into the Treasury and Postal Appropriation’s Bill? If they have, I missed it.
Many of these representatives have spent months trying to make us feel guilty about the tax rebate for one reason and one reason only: They wanted to spend this money themselves because that’s where they get their power. For the better part of the last decade, these congressmen and senators have been having a whale of a party at our expense with the money they have whittled from the defense budget and the surplus that has come in as a result of the boom in the stock market.
An issue brief, released just yesterday by John Berthoud of the National Taxpayers Union, shows that from 1991 to 2001, defense spending has been cut by 25 percent, from $404 billion to $300 billion (in constant 2001 dollars). During that same period, Congress has increased non-defense spending from some $1.3 trillion to $1.6 trillion (in constant 2001 dollars.) In other words, during the last 10 years, non-essential, non-defense federal spending or spending on items traditionally handled by state and local governments rose by an amount equal to our entire yearly outlay for national defense.
Imagine where we would be today if just 10 percent of that money had been channeled back into the military or the fight to combat terrorism. I’m talking about the real fight, not the programs that are designed to make life harder for law-abiding citizens. Likely the World Trade Center still would be standing, thousands of lives would have been spared and the Pentagon would be in one piece. Just imagine where our economy would be today if the rest of that money had been returned to the American people to spend, save and invest.
When an emergency occurs in a family, the family is forced to tighten its belt and get rid of non-essential spending. When an emergency occurs in the nation, the same thing should happen. Unfortunately, in Washington, it’s just the opposite. In Washington, a national emergency is an excuse to throw off all spending restraints and throw an even bigger party.
Under the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990, emergency spending bills are exempt from normal budgetary rules. Is it any wonder that every year Congress comes up with a new emergency, like drought relief for farmers who don’t irrigate their fields or money for people who build in flood-prone areas to rebuild? These things are not emergencies. They are part of the normal weather cycle. However, when Congress passes an emergency spending bill, it doesn’t count this money. It still comes out of the Treasury but Congress pretends it’s free.
However, it does count! Just ask the hardworking, taxpaying citizens of this country who have watched their paychecks slowly eroded to the point where they barely have anything left to take home.
And look at some of the things that have been tucked into recent emergency bills:
- $122 million for cooperative space ventures between the United States and Russia
- $40 million for NASA’s “spacehab” module
- $20 million to hire 500 new employees at an FBI fingerprint facility in West Virginia
- $10 million to convert a post office into a train Station in New York
- $2.2 million for sewers at the site of the 2002 Winter Olympics
- $2 million to allow Ketchikan, Arkansas to join a veneer product feasibility study
- $1.3 million for two sugar mills in Hawaii
- $1 million to construct the Pike’s Peak summit house in Colorado.
If all this sounds un-American, consider the $50,000 that was tucked into a 1999 emergency bill that provided $50,000 to design a CD ROM product to complement the book “We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution.”
What we have now is a true emergency. However, before we dip into the Social Security surplus for the needed funds, Congress should be instructed to go back into the 2002 appropriations bills and cut out all non-essential items. It won’t be hard. Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., identified $433 million in earmarks and other questionable items in the Interior Department’s Appropriation bill. The National Taxpayer’s Union printed a partial list in its July/August newsletter, Capital Ideas:
- $2 million (on top of the $1.5 million already spent) to refurbish a 56-foot tall statue of the Roman god Vulcan in Birmingham, Alabama.
- $1 million above the agency’s request for the National Center for Ecologically-based Noxious Weed Management
- $500,000 more than requested for the Iditarod Historic Trail
- $500,000 to study (not build) an immigration museum for Golden Gate National recreation area and
- $700,000 for the Chicago Wilderness (1) Program
Senator McCain found a cool $3.1 billion in earmarks in the bloated Transportation Appropriations bill. The Office of Management and Budget reports that the number of unrequested projects inserted into spending bills approved by Congress rose from 1,724 in 1993 to 6,454 in the current fiscal year.
These pork-barrel projects are just the tip of the iceberg. Citizens Against Government Waste has identified $1.2 trillion in bad management, duplication and pure waste that could and should be cut out of the budget over the next five years. That pales beside the $40 billion just released by Congress to win the war against terrorism. CAGW’s Sean Rushton says, “A strong economy is vital to the United States, especially at a time when we are under an external threat. The worst thing we could talk about is repealing the tax cut.”
Pete Sepp of the National Taxpayer’s Union agrees: “Economic security and national security go hand in hand. Right now we need to show economic leadership in the world just like we show international leadership. In order to do that, we need a strong vibrant private sector with the resources to get the market back on its feet. The last thing we need to do is to send a weak signal to the gangster nations of the world that our economy is brought to its knees.”
The big spenders in Congress had backed themselves into a corner by pledging to protect the money coming in for Social Security. Please understand that they were poised to dip into this money long before the attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.
$20 billion of the $40 billion just approved is to be used as an immediate response to the crisis. Another $10 billion will be available 15 days after the White House informs Congress of a plan for its use. In other words, the president will have direct control of this money. However, the other $20 billion will be included in spending bills for the next fiscal year beginning October 1. Ah, there’s where the rub comes in.
Look for another spending free-for-all in the coming months. There will be little or no argument about the spending priorities that were in contention before the terrorist attacks. Everyone’s pet projects will get funded to the max. The funds will be taken from the Social Security surplus with the understanding that they will be redeemed from the $20 billion under the control of Congress for the FY 2002, funds that should be spent to shore up our defense and our intelligence gathering forces.
Every dollar that is wasted will be raided from Social Security and it could mean the lives of more innocent civilians and people in uniform. It is wrong and it should stop, but it will not stop until we demand it.
