The Coburn amendments to the Senate emergency supplemental bill aroused passions in both lawmakers and the general public.

The votes on Coburn's amendments opposing earmarks in the supplemental appropriations bill were delayed by a long-winded oration from Sen. Ron Wyden on energy companies. As one might expect, the bloviating senator faced a tough crowd with the public.

Mary Katharine Ham over at Hugh Hewitt had this to say:

Mr. President, I'd like to respectfully request permission to submit an amendment requiring the distinguished gentleman from Oregon to please, for the love of chili dogs, Mother Mary, and the great American game, just STOP TALKING.

Capitol Report's Tim Chapman added:

[A]fter four hours of complaining and exhibiting temper tantrums, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid interrupted Wyden on the Senate floor to ask how much longer he would be. Wyden said he would "stay all night if it meant saving the taxpayers billions."

Ironically, waiting in the Senate hopper all morning was an amendment offered by Senator Tom Coburn that ACTUALLY WOULD save the taxpayers billions by going after the most egregious pork projects in the spending bill. $2 billion to be exact.

Don't expect Wyden to be enthusiastic about Coburn's real savings.

For some, the action of Senate debates rival that of athletic competition (The Wyden remarks were simply bland pregame material). Indeed, once the debate on the second Coburn amendment finally began, Ham started liveblogging:

[Coburn] explains that what's going to happen is that the Congress will give $15 million to a private seafood promotion group that already exists, with very little oversight.
"That may be something that we should do, but that's certainly not an emergency."
"Why should we be subsidizing for one industry what we don't subsidize for any other industry?"
"There's nothing in the bill to tell them what to do with it... They have no plans for how to spend it."

Opponents of the seafood promotion item had declared the $15 million earmark "pork masquerading as seafood." Club for Growth was keeping score:

The second round goes to Coburn! The Senate voted 44-51 on the motion to kill his second amendment. That saved the taxpayers $15 million! ... Good Guys 1, Bad Guys 1.

Coburn was just warming up: "'It's just a start,' he said, pledging many more such amendments." The vote ended a colorful debate on the Senate floor, according to the Associated Press:

"Charlie the Tuna and the Chicken of the Sea mermaid are doing their job just fine without any help of the federal government," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. "Let me save the American taxpayers $15 million right now by telling all Americans now to eat seafood. Eat seafood. It's good for you."

Many fiscal conservatives did not expect to emerge victorious on the seafood amendment, but they pounced on a rash decision by a chairman.

Thursday’s vote surprised even Coburn, who appeared willing to accept defeat on a voice vote. But Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran, R-Miss., grew impatient and forced a roll call.

It was the first time in memory that spending hawks had clashed with the powerful Appropriations Committee and won a floor vote. McCain has scrubbed spending bills for years for so-called pork barrel projects, but routinely lost votes to kill them as appropriators and senior lawmakers in both parties banded together to swat his efforts down.

Over at Porkbusters, N. Z. Bear has the tally:

Earmarks successfully defeated: 1 Earmarks which have survived: 2

You can also follow the results of the remaining 16 amendments (and see who to blame or congratulate on the first three) here.

Coburn's amendments have succeeded in ruffling feathers on the Hill. Americans for Prosperity comments on a quote in the Washington Times:

"Mr. Coburn's time-consuming crusade didn't sit well with everyone. Sen. Christopher S. Bond, Missouri Republican, was overheard sarcastically complaining to an aide 'That's just what I want to do -- vote on his 19 amendments.'" Yep, I bet having to vote on 19 different earmarks can be a little frustrating. But, Sen. Bond, with all due respect, as a taxpayer, I can tell you that it's not half as frustrating as having to pay for those 19 different earmarks.

Andrew Moylan at NTU's Government Bytes asks, "I wonder if we could toss up a retroactive clay pigeon on the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit." The Railroad to Nowhere survived on a close 48-49 vote. Club for Growth is as strident as ever and peeved at Sen. Bill Frist for voting in favor of the $700 million boondoggle:

The first amendment that Coburn offered sought to defund the “Railroad to Nowhere”. It lost by one vote. Coburn and taxpayers could have claimed victory had Bill Frist not voted against it.

Let’s put more emphasis on that. The leader of the Senate. The leader of the Senate GOP. The majority leader who wants to be president. Senator Bill Frist sided with pork-loving politicians like Ted Stevens, Thad Cochran, and Trent Lott instead of Dr. Coburn and the taxpayers. This is the same guy who has show his complete unwillingness to lead the Senate towards fiscal responsibility. Rather than demand that the war supplemental be pork-free, Frist passes the buck, calling on President Bush to veto the bill, only to provoke the President in doing so by voting for the “Railroad to Nowhere”!

There's much more from the conservative blogosphere. Scott Williams calls Coburn "a voice crying out in the wilderness." Michael at Curious and Curiouser eschews the biblical references and prefers, "[W]e owe Senator Coburn a round of applause." He then lists the Republicans who voted for the Railroad to Nowhere. Club for Growth president Pat Toomey warns Republicans that they avoid fiscal responsibility at their peril:

Despite their own calls for a Presidential veto threat on the pork-infested war supplemental bill, the Senate Leadership voted to keep the ‘Railroad to Nowhere’ on track, proving that they’d rather pass the buck than lead the fight for fiscal discipline. The result may very well be that the GOP majority in Congress will be derailed by voters this November.

To understand the crisis that is occurring in the Senate GOP, consider that a majority of Democrats supported the fiscally responsible amendment to defund the ‘Railroad to Nowhere’ while only a minority of Republicans did the same.

The emergency appropriations bill continues to win enemies in the press. Today, the Miami Herald editorializes against it:

It's time for President Bush to brush the cobwebs off the veto stamp that has been gathering dust in his desk drawer ever since he became chief executive. The federal budget process is complicated, but the issue here is simple: An emergency supplemental appropriation -- using federal money to pay for an emergency -- should deal only with emergency issues.

The Washington Examiner is displeased with another of Sen. Thad Cochran's earmarks:

[A]long comes Cochran, who inserts an earmark into the emergency spending bill that directs the Navy to pay Northrop Grumman $500 million in advance of any settlement the company eventually concludes with its insurer. The funds would come from the $2.7 billion Congress has appropriated for damages incurred during Hurricane Katrina. No wonder Judd Legum, writing at the blog ThinkProgress (www.thinkprogress.org), says Cochran views the emergency appropriation measure as “just another opportunity to bring home the bacon.”

And why do we bring this $500 million worth of pork to your attention? For two reasons: First, Cochran’s taste for pork could establish a dangerous precedent whereby insurers could simply avoid or deny settlement, secure in the knowledge that the policy-holder can always turn to the government for reimbursement (no matter that the terms of Cochran’s earmark require the Navy to be repaid by the defense contractor once a settlement is completed with the insurer). That is why the Pentagon’s Defense Contract Management Agency is strongly opposed to the Cochran earmark, calling it “inappropriate.”

Over at NRO, Heritage's Brian Riedl says there are plenty of opportunities for displeasure:

There is no shortage of targets in this bill. After President Bush proposed $92 billion to fund the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Gulf Coast rebuilding, the House quickly passed this legislation with few changes. The Senate Appropriations Committee had no such restraint. The $14 billion they stacked on top of the bill included: a $4 billion farm-subsidy package that, despite near-record farm income, would further subsidize nearly everyone who currently receives farm subsidies regardless of need; $594 million for new highway spending (some as far away as Hawaii, a safe 4,085 miles away from Katrina's deadly path); $20 million more AmeriCorps; and a $1.1 billion giveaway to the fisheries industry.

Mississippi newspapers remain supportive of the bill and the Railroad to Nowhere. The Jackson Clarion-Ledger says:

Conservatives have called the CSX project a "boondoggle" and "pork-barrel politics at its worst." Sorry, but the facts don't support those contentions.

A new inland east-west highway would take pressure off U.S. 90 and provide an area for development of small businesses off the dangerous waterfront.

The new highway would make for a safer, more efficient evacuation route while allowing a safer, more sustainable redevelopment of the Gulf Coast's business community.

Sorry, but an economic development project that's been in the works for decades is not emergency spending.

In lobby reform news, the House lobbying reform bill may become stricter due to a compromise between House Republican leadership and the appropriators led by Rep. Jerry Lewis:

House Republican appropriators, the lawmakers who draft spending bills, had threatened to vote against the legislation because they objected to its restrictions on "earmarks," the special spending items that members routinely insert into appropriations bills to benefit constituents. The appropriators said it wasn’t fair to restrict such items only in appropriations bills and not in tax or policy legislation.

The appropriators, led by their chairman, Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., eventually relented after Hastert and Boehner promised to apply earmark restrictions to all forms of legislation when the final bill gets reconciled with a Senate version passed in March.

Following the GOP leaders’ pledge, the House voted 216-207, largely along partisan lines, to accept the rule governing debate on the bill, indicating likely passage.

The appropriators had originally complained "that the new disclosure rules applied only to appropriation bills, not policy and tax bills." The compromise will actually expand the scope of the earmark reform measure:

The outcome was an important victory for fiscal conservatives like [Rep. Jeff] Flake, since earmarks, which have gained scrutiny because lawmakers sometimes use them to dole out favors to lobbyists, can significantly drive up the cost of the legislation to which they are attached.

Rep. Mike Pence views the bill as a showdown:

"After months of scandal and years of deficit spending, we have come to a moment of truth," said Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., a leader of the conservatives. "We will show today who in this body is committed to reform and who is not."

Rep. Christopher Shays is less happy:

"They [House Republican leaders] are totally clueless when it comes to the issue of reform and ethics," said Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), a moderate who called the lobbying bill "pathetic" and "shameful" and said it was not tough enough.

Finally, we can't neglect waste in other parts of the government. Demian Brady at Government Bytes reports on waste at Homeland Security:

While the Senate is considering dismantling FEMA, they ought to take a look at some of the grants the Department of Homeland Security has doled out. For example, the LA Times reports that Dillingham, Alaska, about 90 minutes by plane from Anchorage...with a population of 2,400, was awarded $202,000 for guard cameras. 80 cameras will be eventually installed to protect this fishing village from terrorists.

Brady dubs it, appropriately, the "CCTV to Nowhere."

Posted by J. Lawrence Scholer at 02:29 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Opposition to the wasteful aspects of the Senate's emergency supplemental bill is mounting.

At the Corner, Kathryn Jean Lopez reports, "Senators Frist, McConnell, and Sessions just finished assembling over 34 Senate signatures on a letter backing the veto threat the President laid out yesterday on the groaning Senate supplemental." The New York Times places the number at 35, and explains why this is cause for celebration:

In the Senate, 35 Republicans, enough to sustain a veto, signed a letter on Wednesday saying they would back Mr. Bush if he decided to veto the bill. Senator George Allen of Virginia, who like many other Republicans is campaigning for re-election on a theme of fiscal restraint, was among the signers. "I think an emergency supplemental ought to deal with only emergency matters," Mr. Allen said.

The letter concluded what had been a disappointing day in the Senate. Yesterday, Sen. Tom Coburn introduced a package of 19 amendments to the supplemental bill that would axe $2.7 billion in earmarks. The Washington Times reports on the first vote:

[T]he first few tests of senators' willingness to cut the bill didn't go well. Senators voted 49-48 to kill a proposal [from Sen. Tom Coburn] that would have stripped a highly contentious $700 million plan to reroute a railroad in Mississippi -- dubbed by critics as "the railroad to nowhere." And 72 senators voted to kill an amendment that would have immediately stripped the Senate bill down to Mr. Bush's level. Sen. Craig Thomas, Wyoming Republican, offered this proposal, which 26 Republicans supported.

Roll Call has more on the Coburn amendment:

Backed by a growing number of Republicans unhappy with skyrocketing federal spending, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) launched a broadside attack on members of the Appropriations Committee on Wednesday, using an obscure procedural motion to take control of the Senate debate over a $106.5 billion supplemental appropriation in hopes of forcing several days of politically difficult votes on 19 earmarks in the bill. Late in the day Wednesday, Coburn proposed an amendment to strip 19 earmarks from the bill. Before the clerk could read the amendment, however, he motioned to have the amendment divided into 19 separate parts, in what is known as a “clay pigeon” procedure. According to Coburn’s office, the maneuver has been used only once in Senate history, by then-Sen. Bob Smith (R-N.H.) in the 1980s. But in a tight vote late Wednesday, the Senate agreed, 49-48, to table the first division, which would have eliminated a railroad relocation project in Mississippi. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) joined Coburn and other opponents of the earmark in voting against the tabling. The move, which appeared to take Appropriations Chairman Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) by surprise, put Coburn and his backers in control of the floor, since the amendment, and all of its divisions, are considered the pending business on the floor. Coburn, along with Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), John Sununu (R-N.H.), John Ensign (R-Nev.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) also unsuccessfully tried to have the bill sent back to the committee with instructions to re-report the supplemental spending measure with a total cost of $94.5 billion — the level President Bush set as a ceiling Tuesday in a veto threat.

Grassroots groups weighed in on the vote. Despite the narrow loss, Americans for Prosperity expressed saw reasons for optimism::

To most Senators, the idea of voting to kill a $700 million earmark sponsored by the Appropriations Committee Chairman must feel a little like Clay Aiken picking a bare-knuckled street fight with Mike Tyson. Considering this, the fact that today’s vote was so close shows how many grassroots taxpayers have made their frustration felt in Washington through grassroots groups like Americans for Prosperity.

Mississippi newspapers, however, continue to support the $700 million pork project. The Sun-Herald reports:

Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) successfully fought an effort to remove funding in the emergency supplemental appropriations bill that would provide for the rerouting of the CSX rail line, a press release said Wednesday.

The Jackson Clarion Ledger adds:

Commission member Anthony Topazi, president and CEO of Mississippi Power, said the railroad project has been mischaracterized as a pork spending. "This is needed to protect people from future disasters," he said. Lott said he and Barbour have explained the need for the project to groups in Washington. "It is about a need for an east-west route," Lott said. "It is about evacuation. It is going to be difficult (to pass). We'll give it our best shot. But sooner or later this (railroad) tracking is going to be moved."

National Review sees an opportunity for reform:

One look at this pork-fest should be enough to persuade anyone of the importance of the emergency-spending reform conservatives persuaded the House leadership to include as part of this year's budget resolution. The reform would require Congress to set aside, in each year's budget, a "rainy day fund" for emergencies; emergency spending in excess of that fund would have to go to the House Budget Committee for a vote.

The president's decision to draw a line in the sand and threaten to veto the emergency spending has garnered the praise of more than the 35 senators who have vowed to uphold a veto.

Here's how Heritage's Alison Fraser and Brian Riedl appraise the threat:

[N]ow the dynamic has changed. Last night, the White House supplied the firm leadership needed to stop the Senate from hijacking this supplemental by issuing a strongly-worded promise to veto the bill if the extraneous spending is not removed. This line in the sand deserves high praise.

Opposition to wasteful spending and fiscal irresponsbility crosses party and ideological lines. Newspapers across the country are supporting the president's decision. The Denver Post opines:

Really, where's the "emergency" here? We have two problems with this emergency spending bill: Not only does it contain unnecessary spending, it also seems completely unnecessary to, year after year, pay the ongoing costs of war through these emergency supplemental measures.

The Wall Street Journal adds:

Is this a good use of tax dollars? Mississippians don't think so. Last year Governor Haley Barbour's commission on recovery from Hurricane Katrina rejected the project as "no longer seen as practical" because of the steep price tag. If Mississippians don't want to foot the bill, why should federal taxpayers?

Even the New York Times approves as well. They are, however, cynical about the motives:

What's at the heart of the veto threat is an intramural Republican war over a feared mutiny by voters this November. House Republicans running as fiscal "hawks" (after years of cheerleading for the costly Bush tax cuts for the affluent) back the president's budget request; the Senate Republicans who are more concerned about popular spending programs opt for the add-ons.

Even the history buffs are getting a share of the pork:

The former home of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina, should be rebuilt as quickly as possible, say many Civil War buffs as well as officials at the National Trust for Historic Preservation.... Damage to the home amounts to at least an estimated $25 million.... But at the behest of the National Trust and other historic preservation organizations, Senate Appropriations Chairman Thad Cochran has included $80 million to restore storm-battered historic property in a $27 billion emergency hurricane package the Senate plans to debate this week.

First, as the piece notes, "The federal government has no responsibility to rebuild historic sites damaged by a natural disaster." Second, our own Ron Utt, recently returned from Mississippi, has this to say:

Sen. Cochran has earmarked $80 million for a repair and restoration that is estimated to cost $25 million. Having visited this site several weeks ago, the $25 million seems excessive.

As you may recall, in 1875 Jefferson Davis was elected to the U.S. Senate. He, however, refused to take the seat (the Constitution barred him from becoming a Senator). Today's senators should show some similar restraint and refuse the pork.

Some lawmakers are taking principled stands, and many newspapers and editorialists are speaking up.

As he has done for quite some time now, Rep. Jeff Flake, at Human Events Online, showcases the “Egregious Earmark of the Week”:

This week it was discovered in the Transportation-Treasury-HUD appropriations bill (H.R. 3058) for fiscal year 2006. The award goes to the city of Rome, N.Y. which is collecting $100,000 for the construction of a community recreation center.

The Missoulian (Missoula, Montana) eloquently editorializes against earmark abuse:

Let's belabor the obvious here to make clear our objection: Congress doesn't spend its money. It spends your money. When you don't have enough money for the purpose, Congress helpfully takes out loans in your name. There's a redistributionist nature to most government spending. But in the case of earmarks, it's particularly objectionable. With an earmark, your senator or congressman takes money from you and/or borrows money in your name and gives it to someone else, often as a payback for political support or favors.

The Charlottesville Daily Progress (Virginia) agrees:

[T]he new impetus toward reform is encouraging. The pork-barrel rider is a distortion of democracy that has troubled many right-thinking people for a very long time.

So does John Slagle in the American Chronicle:

If politicians could control their unbridled self interest pork barrel spending habits on questionable nonsense for a year, the U.S. order Patrol and the U.S. Coast Guard could receive needed equipment and personnel without tapping the DOD budget. 64 billion dollars in Pork projects for 2005 could be better spent than “studying the mating habits” of a mosquito, why Teens like Gothic or building an indoor Midwest Rain Forest.

Still, there are clear setbacks. Last year’s infamous Bridges to Nowhere are going to be built, reports the Anchorage Daily News:

[T]he Knik Arm crossing from Anchorage to Point MacKenzie, one of two so-called "bridges to nowhere" that gained nationwide notoriety as examples of congressional pork, would get the $93.6 million that the governor proposed. The bridge is estimated to cost at least $400 million. Similarly, the Ketchikan-Gravina Island bridge would get the $91 million Murkowski had proposed in his capital spending proposal for next year. That project has been estimated to cost about $315 million.

The lobbying reform effort continues to run into troubles, according to the AP:

"Virtually everyone seems to be unhappy with some aspect of this," said Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier, R-Calif.

Some in Congress feel that the bill is too harsh:

The House bill requires lobbyists to file quarterly reports on their activities, up from the current twice-a-year reports; suspends all privately funded travel through the end of the year; requires appropriations, or spending, bills to list earmarks; and takes away the retirement benefits of lawmakers convicted of corruption-related crimes.

Other Members claim it doesn’t go far enough:

"I think it is weak," [Rep. Christopher] Shays said of the base bill. "I don't think it measures up."

Earmarks could damage the prospects of lobby reform. On Townhall's Capitol Report Tim Chapman reports, "Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis is threatening to take down a lobby reform bill in the House because it contains earmark reform."

Rep. Jeff Flake has harsh words for Lewis:

“This is a poison pill by appropriators,” Flake said. He brought up his separate earmark bill, which makes changes similar to the Garrett amendment, noting, “Jerry Lewis is not on it. … Appropriators know you lose the whole thing if you broaden it. Let’s take what we’ve got.”

If you're questioning whether corruption really is an issue, look no further than West Virginia Rep. Alan Mollohan:

On May 31, 2005, Mollohan and Dale R. McBride purchased a Tucker County farm for $800,000 through their partnership, M & M Partners LLC. Less than a month later, FMW Composite Systems, of which McBride is CEO and president, received a $22 million contract from the U.S Marine Corps to manufacture "fuels, lubes and waxes" for an expeditionary fuel system. FMW has 50 to 60 employees at its Bridgeport facility.

The Washington Post provides some background on Mollohan:

In addition to winning approval of the contract for McBride's company, Mollohan used his position on the House Appropriations Committee to secure more than $150 million in appropriations for five nonprofit groups in his congressional district, including one run by a former congressional aide who, along with her husband, bought $2 million worth of property with Mollohan and his wife, according to an April 8 report in the Journal.

Mollohan denies any wrongdoing and pins the blame on, who else, Karl Rove:

"It's payback time by Karl Rove," he said. "They know my strength is in appropriations, my credibility is in appropriations. So that is where they are attacking my credibility. ... (They are) attacking everything that we've done in the region that's good and recasting it as bad."

A recent NBC News/ Wall Street Journal poll found that Americans think that earmark reform should be Congress's top priority. Now, some congressional candidates are beginning to realize that earmarks make a good campaign plank. Tennessee's Bob Corker:

Republican Senate candidate Bob Corker said Wednesday he was "joining with other conservatives in calling for a ‘pork free’ emergency spending bill, which is under consideration today in the United States Senate." He said, “Spending in Washington is out of control. By adding wasteful pork projects to a so-called ‘emergency spending’ bill, the Congress is once again abandoning our fiscal conservative principles. In the Senate, I will work with other conservatives to end this type of reckless spending.”

And, take Vermont’s Martha Rainville:

Rainville says that if she's elected to the seat held by Bernard Sanders she would work to eliminate earmarks, which frequently are tacked to legislation that's not directly related to the spending proposal.

In the NBC News/WSJ poll, 39 percent of Americans viewed earmark reform as a top priority, ahead of immigration reform.

Posted by J. Lawrence Scholer at 12:26 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday, we blogged on the Senate's near miss on Mississippi's "railroad to nowhere." That amendment was the first of many sponsored by Sen. Tom Coburn that will come before the Senate during its debate on the emergency supplemental bill.

Today the Senate is expected to vote on Coburn's remaining amendments--18 in all. Sen. Coburn's office has distributed a list to the media of what the Senate has left to consider (the amendment text is not yet online):

1. Seafood promotion strategies
2. Driver’s license facility in Macon, GA
3. Business disruption expenses for private shipbuilders (Northrop Grumman)
4. FHA emergency relief backlog table
5. Three-year study of shrimp and reef fishery profitability
6. AmeriCorps/National Civilian Community Corps
7. Procurement of V-22 Osprey
8. American River (Common Features) project in CA
9. Electronic logbooks for fishing vessels
10. Armed Forces Retirement Home
11. Vessel monitoring systems
12. New England toxic red tide
13. South Sacramento Streams project in CA
14. Temporary marine services centers
15. Replacement of private fisheries infrastructure
16. Employ fishers and vessel owners
17. Replace damaged fishing gear
18. Sacramento Riverbank Protection project in CA

Remember, these items are part of a bill intended to provide emergency appropriations for the war on terror and hurricane relief. Cutting these items would save taxpayers almost $2 billion.

You can keep track of the votes here. It's not in real time, so stick to C-Span if you want live floor action.

Posted by J. Lawrence Scholer at 09:38 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The vote came out 49 to 48 in favor of tabling an amendment to the supplemental (text not yet on Thomas) sponsored by Sen. Tom Coburn.

N.Z. Bear is despondent:

Bad news from the Hill: an amendment introduced by Senator Tom Coburn challenging the Railroad to Nowhere has been defeated by a 49-48 vote.

Voting against $700M for the Railroad to Nowhere: Harry Reid, Senate Democratic Leader

Voting in favor of $700M for the Railroad to Nowhere: Senator Bill Frist, Senate Republican Leader

Welcome to the fiscally conservative Republican revolution! Somewhere, Newt is turning over in his grave. [Ed.: Newt's not dead. Yeah, but this might kill him.]

Tim Chapman is optimistic:

...while this is disappointing, there are reasons for conservatives to be optimistic at the end of this day.

The vote tally on the railroad amendment was better than in the past...

Because we work for Ed Feulner, advantage: optimists!

Posted by Andrew Grossman at 11:19 PM in Federal Spending | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

Kathryn-Jean Lopez has word on the Senate letter that could make the President's veto threat on the supplemental spending bill stick:

Senators Frist, McConnell, and Sessions just finished assembling over 34 Senate signatures on a letter backing the veto threat the President laid out yesterday on the groaning Senate supplemental. This plan—have the President say he will veto a fat bill, and have the Senate leadership deliver fiscal conservatives to that cause—should serve as a rallying point for those who have been horrified at the spending spree underway in Congress, for which the House, Senate, and White House all share responsibility. It’s time to rally to the fiscal conservative flag, and the sooner our friends in the conservative community know that there is a majority in the Senate worth listening too when it comes to spending matters, the sooner people can realize what the stakes really are in November.

Update: And here is the letter (PDF link). As a public service, we'll retype the text:

Dear Mr. President:

We strongly support your leadership in providing support for the Global War on Terror, hurricane relief efforts, and other emergency needs. However, we also agree with you that we have a responsibility to the American people to control spending.

Like you, we are seriously concerned with the overall funding level in the Senate-reported bill, and the numerous items that are unrelated to the Global War on Terror or emergency hurricane relief needs. Should the final bill presented to you exceed the total amount you requested, forcing you to veto the bill, we will vote to sustain your veto.

And following that text are more than enough signatures to make the point stick.

Posted by Andrew Grossman at 03:37 PM in Federal Spending | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Heritage's Alison Fraser and Brian Riedl are very positive on the President's threat to veto the supplemental defense spending bill if the Senate succeeds in loading it down with unrelated pork-barrel projects:

The President is to be commended for his strong leadership in enforcing fiscal discipline. The White House Statement of Administration Policy draws a clear line in the sand by firmly pledging to veto the supplemental spending bill if non-avian flu funding exceeds $92.2 billion. Overall, this SAP receives an A- in fiscal responsibility.

They run through and grade each major item in the bill and argue that, in the Senate, "the dynamic has changed" thanks to the President's promise to veto a bad bill. But "this must be an ironclad promise," they warn. The President must be willing to follow through.

Posted by Andrew Grossman at 03:31 PM in Federal Spending | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Today's top news: President Bush issued a Statement of Administration Policy (SAP), or veto threat, on the spending bill:

[T]he Senate reported bill substantially exceeds the President’s request, primarily for items that are unrelated to the GWOT and hurricane response. The Administration is seriously concerned with the overall funding level and the numerous unrequested items included in the Senate bill that are unrelated to the war or emergency hurricane relief needs. The final version of the legislation must remain focused on addressing urgent national priorities while maintaining fiscal discipline. Accordingly, if the President is ultimately presented a bill that provides more than $92.2 billion, exclusive of funding for the President’s plan to address pandemic influenza, he will veto the bill.

And it gets better:

The Administration strongly objects to the $700 million included in the Senate bill to relocate the privately owned rail line that runs along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The CSX Corporation, using its own resources, has already repaired damage to the line, and trains are now running. Relocating the tracks would represent a substantial investment beyond pre-disaster conditions and would improperly require U.S. taxpayers to pay for private sector infrastructure.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was quick to praise the President's statement:

Families must live within their means, and so should Washington. I applaud the Administration’s determination to stick to true emergency spending, and will support a veto, if necessary, to keep federal spending under control.

So how does the SAP stack up? Really, it's quite good from a fiscal responsibility standpoint. First, it sets a solid, clear line on the total level of spending--Senators are now fully informed at what level the President will cut them off. Second, it directly hits several of the more egregious and expensive non-emergency projects stuffed into the Senate bill. As we wrote yesterday, what's in the bill matters as much as the total level of spending, and if an item does not address an emergency, it has no business being in an emergency supplemental and outside of the normal budget process, which is subject to caps and other procedural safeguards (weak as those may be). The President's SAP takes both of these points seriously.

With one exception. The Senate bill includes $2.3 billion for avian flu preparedness. This comes on top of $3.8 billion that Congress appropriated just four months ago, funding which will become available in August. From the White House's perspective, this additional appropriation brings the total close to what it had originally requested last year. And so the White House specifically exempts this addition from its SAP's veto threat. From Congress's point of view, this is an easy way to target a few more bucks where it may or may not be urgently needed without being subject to normal budget rules. Politically, then, this makes sense, but it reopens a slipperly slope because this funding doesn't really fit the "emergency" designation as well as the other items in the President supplemental request. A better response from the White House would be to insist that Congress balance this additional funding with offsets elsewhere in the budget.

Bush's action capped a busy day of action on the emergency supplemental.

Early in the day, Americans for Prosperity called on the President to act like a nanny for a misbehaving Congress:

Another season of the hit Fox show Nanny 911 will air this summer – and just in time for President Bush to watch. The President could learn a thing or two from the British Nannies about handling disobedient kids... errr.. umm I mean lawmakers.

What can nannies teach President Bush?

Be Consistent
No means no. Yes means yes.

Actions Have Consequences

Good behavior is rewarded. Bad behavior comes with penalties.

Say What You Mean and Mean It

Think before you speak—or you’ll pay the price.

In the early afternoon, Reps. Jeff Flake and Mike Pence each called on President Bush to veto the bill as it now stands in the Senate.

Pence:

This legislation has become a fruit basket of spending unrelated to our war effort and Katrina, and I say plainly, ‘Mr. President, veto this bill.’

Flake:

I think the Senate is taking the term ‘railroading the taxpayers’ a little too literally with this Railroad to Nowhere.

President Bush has been complicit in Congress’ spending spree for too long. He needs to tell us that he will veto the spending bill if we load it up with pork, and he needs to mean it.

Senators have gotten into the act, too:

“It’s time for fiscal responsibility in this town,” [Sen. John] Ensign said in an interview outside the Hart Senate Office Building yesterday afternoon....

“I do hope we can get [the supplemental spending bill] down to the president’s level,” said Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), who is both an appropriator and a colleague of Ensign’s on a task force of conservatives called the Fiscal Action Team.

Heritage president Ed Feulner lambastes the Railroad to Nowhere in the Chicago Sun-Times today. Conservatives in Congress are off-track, he writes:

Then again, a free-spending attitude is sadly common in Washington these days. But it didn't used to be, at least among conservatives. Back in 1993, Lott and Cochran helped defeat President Bill Clinton's ill-advised "stimulus" package, a $16.3 billion pork-barrel measure (ironically, almost the same amount that's been wastefully added to the current spending bill). "And where are we going to get the money?" Cochran asked Congress then. "We are going to increase the deficit, which requires the government to borrow more money and to pay more interest. That is not economically healthy, that is economically dangerous."

Back then, Republicans were the minority party in the Senate, and they hung together to fight for principles. These days, too many act as if big government is good government as long as it's "our" government -- a distinctly non-conservative and foolhardy position to take.

The Washington Post editorializes against the supplemental, calling it the "Great Train Robbery":

[I]n recent years, with the combination of tight regular spending caps and supplementals swelled to gargantuan sizes by the cost of military operations, they've become a central element of an off-the-books budgetary scam in which the true price of government is obscured and the need to make difficult trade-offs avoided.

Quoted by Human Events' Rob Bluey, Jonathan Rick of the ACU notes a few items in the Senate bill:

Congress has repeatedly abused the supplemental appropriations process to ram through pet spending projects that cannot stand on their own merits. Today, the congressional definition of an “emergency” encompasses such dire needs as subsidizing profitable agribusinesses, to the tune of an additional $4 billion, on top of an annual $25 billion; rerouting a recently repaired and completely functional railroad in Mississippi, at a cost of $700 million, to benefit coastal developers and the casino industry; and a $1.5 million grant to the Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies.

BNA cites Heritage in mentioning more of the bill's egregious measures:

Among other things, the Heritage Foundation took aim at the $1 billion for fisheries projects in the bill, the funds for avian flu preparedness, and almost $600 million for emergency highway repairs.

But the organization also criticized the $4 billion in agricultural assistance as an unnecessary "farm bailout" at a time when the farm economy is strong.

"As the bill moves to the floor, senators are threatening to add billions more for milk subsidies, veterans' health care, and the Army Corps of Engineers," the organization said. "All told, senators may exceed the president's spending level by $25 billion."

"But"?!

Calling the SAP "unusually blunt," today's New York Times reports that President Bush may be getting tough on policing Congress's spending problem:

With many grassroots conservatives up in arms over what they consider excessive growth in government spending under Mr. Bush, and with new scrutiny being applied to the pet projects lawmakers routinely insert into spending bills, the veto threat suggested that Mr. Bush wanted to strike a more assertive posture on the issue. He has issued only 27 veto threats since he took office in 2001 and has not actually vetoed a single measure, even though Congress has passed many bills that exceeded his budget requests.

Mark Tapscott writes: "It's good to see the White House weigh in on the right side." But he also wants to see the President "explicitly vow to veto the bill containing the controversial earmark."

BNA covers Sen. Frist's intentions--despite the controversy, the supplemental may move forward more quickly than many were predicting yesterday:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), who said he is working with an increasingly short legislative calendar, said he will work to rein in the bill (H.R. 4939), which ballooned to $106.5 billion in committee, and limit lawmakers' amendments in order to finish the measure over the next several days and ready it for a conference. But he acknowledged that the massive FY 2006 "emergency" spending bill, which exceeds Bush's own request by more than $14 billion, will be difficult to pare back on the Senate floor.

The Washington Times rounds up what conservatives and Republicans are saying about the supplemental. We liked this quite from ACU's David Keene:

They're playing the game that Democrats played for 40 years: "We can buy our re-election."

But that may not work, exactly. Bloomberg reports:

The risk is that many of the issues on the unity agenda will have little appeal to swing voters -- and also may not address the key concerns of rank-and-file Republicans, who according to party activists are most upset about spending and deficits. In addition, some of the agenda issues, such as medical malpractice and gay marriage, may not win congressional approval.

"The public is very cynical about Congress at the moment," said Roger Davidson, a visiting professor of political science at the University of California at Santa Barbara. "Its favorability ratings are down with the president's, and I think voters are going to look very suspiciously at these issues."

In the Financial Times, the Club for Growth's David Keating says simply of the Senate bill, "This sort of nonsense is going to hurt Republicans."

Leadership may be in agreement on this. Reports Roll Call,

According to a GOP aide, Frist successfully argued that while “The POTUS isn’t on the ballot this year, a lot of our guys are, and marginal issues like this could be particularly important” in an election year during which Republicans are facing a threat to their majority.

(Size of government is a "marginal issue" for Republicans?! Oh, dear.)

NBC's First Call adds a favorable comment to the mix:

NBC's Mike Viqueira reports that when asked yesterday what the GOP plans to do about its poor standing in the polls, House Majority Leader John Boehner replied, "Hold the line on spending."

Mark Steyn, however is still upset about the anti-porkbuster backlash:

"The Republican party," says Arlen Specter, "is now principally moderate, if not liberal" — and he means it as a compliment. "I'll just say this about the so-called porkbusters," chips in Trent Lott. "I'm getting damn tired of hearing from them. They have been nothing but trouble since Katrina."

Well, to be honest, I'm a good half-decade past getting damn tired of hearing from Trent Lott. But the difference is that, as a member of the pork-funding sector of the economy, I pay for him; he doesn't pay for me. . . .

Among the only people less than enthused about the veto threat is Sen. Thad Cochran, who told CQToday, "They're just wrong about it being a road to nowhere." He added, "Those who are criticizing it and making jokes about it are wrong." Of course, Cochran is a driving force behind the increased spending: according to Roll Call, he "recommended $4.6 billion of this increase himself." Sen. Pete Domenici was also dubious, telling CongressDaily, "I don't know if we'll be able to get it down to what [Bush] wants."

In the Washington Times, Heritage's Brian Riedl explains the budget process's role in the current controversy over the supplemental :

It's easy to blame lawmakers for avoiding difficult decisions. But when so many reformers "go native" after arriving in Washington, the larger problem becomes clear: The budget process itself makes it virtually impossible even for well-meaning lawmakers to restrain spending.

Indeed, the federal budget process, created 30 years ago, works to maximize spending. Unlike the 50 state legislatures, the federal government has no enforceable spending limits. This means lawmakers, who often spend days at a time listening to special interests plead for money, can simply add up every spending request and spend that amount without setting priorities and making necessary trade-offs.

Special interests will never cease pressing for more money. Lawmakers need a budget process that helps them say no.

Perhaps having decided to illustrate Riedl's point, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin comes out in favor of earmarking:

As the first Illinois senator on the Senate Appropriations Committee in 35 years, Durbin said: "I have an opportunity to help the state. I do it with earmarks. They're very open. There's nothing secret or sinister about them. People know exactly what they're appropriating money for."

Rep. Ray LaHood agrees on the value of earmarks even as he has to defend himself from ethics complaints arising from them:

LaHood denies any connection between the earmarks he helped secure for local businesses and the fund raising their lobbyists did on his behalf.

"There is absolutely no link," LaHood said. "I help Caterpillar because they're the company in my district. I help Firefly because I think they have a very worthwhile research and development project going on. . . . Some of these hospitals that have benefited, I think we've benefited by the fact that they've been able to get some federal dollars.

"I've helped these organizations because of where they are. They're in Peoria. They're in my district."

NASA director Michael Griffin, whose organization received $568.5 million in earmarks last year, is not a fan:

The Growth of these Congressional directions is eroding NASA's ability to carry out its mission of space exploration and peer-reviewed scientific discovery.

More:

"I feel about these earmarks the same way I always feel about earmarks," Griffin told reporters after the hearing. "Our budget is very limited. We have a strategy approved by Congress, and we can carry out that strategy . . . but every earmark, if it isn't coaligned with that strategy, is a fiscal distraction."

As far as the future, Griffin said he understood that "members have specific interests, and we try to work with members," but $568.5 million was a bit much. What would he like instead? "I would like it to be a lower number," he said. "This is not a hard problem, guys."

Former Delaware Gov. Pete du Pont is puts forward a six-point plan to get spending under control, much of it process-related. He argues that drastic steps are necessary beccause the GOP is losing the national electorate on fiscal issues: Contra recent Sen. Arlen Specter quotes, "It is not Republicans who are liberal, it is the current Republican government that is fiscally liberal and the biggest budget-busting federal spenders since the 1960s." A big part of his fix is cleaning up earmarks:

As a start it should adopt the proposal from Rep. Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.) that each earmark's sponsor be identified in the text of spending bills, and that a vote be allowed on specific earmark proposals. Congress should also establish term limits for Appropriations Committee members so that the congressional political establishment cannot go on swag-splitting forever.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal wonders whether Republicans will get serious about earmark reform:

The issue of "earmarking" -- in which senators or representatives add projects subjected to little or no scrutiny to spending bills at the last second -- has been in the news for the past few months thanks to the Jack Abramoff lobbying and corruption scandal. But while at least one bill is pending that would give lawmakers more opportunity to challenge such requests, the oink fest continues inside the beltway.

Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit posts on the alleged earmark-related ethics violations of Rep. Alan Mollohan and Sen. Arlen Specter:

One lesson is that when members of Congress "help" people get grants, it's a lure for people who want them to use whatever influence they can.

Indeed.

Today's New York Times reports on Mollohan's earmark racket:

Representative Alan B. Mollohan, the West Virginia Democrat who stepped down from the House ethics committee last week over accusations of financial improprieties, bought a $900,000 farm last year with a lifelong friend whose business he has supported with special federal appropriations known as earmarks.

Mr. Mollohan acknowledged yesterday that he had on several occasions steered earmarks to federal agencies to finance contracts with his friend's company, FMW Composite Systems.

But the Representative has an explanation:

But Mr. Mollohan said that he was not FMW's only "Congressional sponsor" and that he saw no conflict of interest between his personal real estate purchase and the company's federal contracts.

Well, that answers that.

The New Republic editorializes on Mollohan:

Mollohan's first response to these charges was to call them partisan attacks spread by political opponents. He may be right, but sometimes partisan attacks have merit. And the evidence of a conflict of interest, at the very least, seems cut and dry. The Democrat's ethics committee leader ought to have known better than to buy an estate with a defense contractor.

In addition to appropriators, "members of Ways and Means and other committees" are also complaining about the pending "lobbying reform" bill, reports CQ.

The Cato Institute suggests other measures that would counteract federal corruption but somehow haven't made it into the pending legislation. These include privatization of transportation and housing measures, downsizing government, federalism, free trade, and budget transparency. A smaller, more limited government, they argue, would invite less corruption. Good point

Robert Samuelson takes Congress to task for not doing what it's supposed to:

I'm concentrating on domestic policies that I know better: the budget, taxes, health care, energy policy and immigration. On all these, the nation has serious business to do. But the administration isn't doing it.

He continues:

Projected Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid costs could expand the federal budget by 30 percent to 40 percent by 2030. To limit these huge increases -- implying much higher taxes or draconian cuts in other programs -- we should gradually raise eligibility ages for Social Security and Medicare, as well as curb benefits for wealthier retirees. Instead, Bush worsened the outlook by enacting the biggest-ever expansion of Medicare. The new drug benefit will cost $792 billion from 2006 to 2015, estimates the Congressional Budget Office....Unless we control health costs, they will squeeze out other public and private spending. In 1993, health spending was 13.8 percent of national income (gross domestic product); in 2005, it was 16.2 percent of GDP. The administration promotes health savings accounts, but by its own projections, these won't help much. In 2015, health spending will hit an estimated 20 percent of GDP.

Finally, Andy Roth links to a list of coloring books published by government agencies. There are fifty published by the federal government, including "Having Fun at Your Local Farmers Market," "Tommy Tsunami and Ernie Earthquake Coloring Book," and "Thirstin's Wacky Water Adventures." That last one is what we'll be working on this afternoon.

Posted by Andrew Grossman at 12:20 PM in Federal Spending | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The White House just released its Statement of Administrative Policy on the pending supplemental spending bill.

For those concerned about spending issues, here are the important grafs:

However, the Senate reported bill substantially exceeds the President’s request, primarily for items that are unrelated to the GWOT and hurricane response. The Administration is seriously concerned with the overall funding level and the numerous unrequested items included in the Senate bill that are unrelated to the war or emergency hurricane relief needs. The final version of the legislation must remain focused on addressing urgent national priorities while maintaining fiscal discipline. Accordingly, if the President is ultimately presented a bill that provides more than $92.2 billion, exclusive of funding for the President’s plan to address pandemic influenza, he will veto the bill.

In addition, today the President sent to Congress a revision to the Administration’s pending supplemental request, asking for an additional $2.2 billion for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to heighten and strengthen levees in New Orleans. This additional funding is fully offset by a corresponding reduction to the previous request for the Disaster Relief Fund and assumes a non-Federal share for a portion of the work. The Administration urges the Senate to amend the bill to incorporate this revised request during its consideration of the bill.

And:

The Administration strongly objects to the $700 million included in the Senate bill to relocate the privately owned rail line that runs along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The CSX Corporation, using its own resources, has already repaired damage to the line, and trains are now running. Relocating the tracks would represent a substantial investment beyond pre-disaster conditions and would improperly require U.S. taxpayers to pay for private sector infrastructure.

And since it's not on the OMB site here, here's a copy of the full thing.

Update: The Senate Majority Leader responds:

Families must live within their means, and so should Washington. I applaud the Administration’s determination to stick to true emergency spending, and will support a veto, if necessary, to keep federal spending under control.

Posted by Andrew Grossman at 05:40 PM in Federal Spending | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Rep. Mike Pense and Rep. Jeff Flake are both asking that the President veto the supplemental now under consideration by Congress. Andy Roth posts the texts of their letters. In the House, Pense and Flake are the leaders on spending-related issues, and so what they say carries much wait with conservative Members and conservatives in general.

By the way, this page on the OMB site is where a SAP--that is a veto threat--would turn up...

Posted by Andrew Grossman at 04:26 PM in Federal Spending | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Tim Chapman reports here on this morning's press conference on the Senate's pork-stuffed supplemental. The whole thing is supposed to land on C-SPAN sometime night, but nobody's told us anything more definite than that.

So to tide you over, here are a couple pictures, snapped by Heritage's Andrew Blasko:

Heritage's Alison Fraser digs into the details and appears to be gesticulating a "line in the air," which is what comes right before a "line in the sand."

Fraser again, flanked by Grover Norquist, Rep. Tom Feeney, Rep. John Campbell, and ACU's David Keene.

David Keene of ACU again.

Sure, they're not moving pictures, but how much is C-SPAN improved, generally, by the fact that it airs video instead of Ken Burns-style stills?

Find more of Blasko's photography (and no, it's not all photos of outraged wonks mugging for the media) on the puzzlingly-named weblog Photo by Blasko.

Posted by Andrew Grossman at 04:06 PM in Federal Spending | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The quote alluded to in the subject of this post is usually associated with the NRA and firearms, but in recent months many have attached it to a new topic: Internet freedom. It became a rallying cry in the fight to keep the FEC and campaign finance "reform" away from bloggers' keyboards and mice.

So it is a strange meme collision indeed when a well-known Second Amendment group, long devoted to keeping the government away from its members' guns, come out in favor of...regulating the Internet. But that seems to be what's happened, explains Heritage's James Gattuso:

Last time I checked, the second Amendment referred to a “well-regulated Militia” being important. I didn’t catch the part about a regulated Internet. Yet, there was Gunowners of America, pushing for wide-ranging government controls on how network providers run their networks.

How very, very odd.

Posted by Andrew Grossman at 04:04 PM in Regulation | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Writing on the Corner, Kathryn-Jean Lopez cites an anonymous Senate source claiming that President Bush will issue a veto threat on the supplemental spending bill "if it exceeds his emergency requests." This is encouraging news. We've been hoping for some time that the President would draw a line in the sand and help the Senate do the right thing.

But a question remains: Will the President's threat really force the Senate into a course of even slight fiscal responsibility? Keeping spending down below the President's initial request level is important, but how that money is spent matters, too. The President should therefore threaten to veto a bill that contains any extraneous spending items--that is, anything that is not truly emergency spending. Funding for the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq qualifies and is fair game for a supplemental bill. Hurricane-related funding that addresses immediate, on-the-ground needs qualifies, too. But not pork projects. Whatever its merit, the "Railroad to Nowhere," for example, is just not an emergency need. Little, if any, of the junk that the Senate has thrown into the supplemental and is still considering adding makes the cut, either.

If it's not an emergency need, it shouldn't be in the supplemental. That's a simple rule, and one that the President should enforce.

Anyway, word is that a Statement of Administrative Policy--in non-geek speak, a veto threat--will be out real soon now.

And what if the SAP isn't strong enough? Well, don't count the Senate out yet, reports the Hill:

Senate conservatives are considering sending a letter to President Bush urging him to issue a veto threat against a $106 billion emergency supplemental spending bill.

If pursued, the letter would be the strongest signal to date of a commitment to pare a war-funding measure that conservatives say has been larded with unnecessary extras.

Supporters would be unlikely to send a letter without 34 signatures, the number of votes needed to sustain a veto.

Such a letter is “under discussion,” according to a senior Senate Republican aide who cautioned, “I am unaware of anyone drafting [a] letter at this time."

But that could change very, very quickly.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is reportedly traveling to Washington to build support for his state's desired "Railroad to Nowhere" earmark. Tim Chapman has the details.

Andy Roth posts Barbour's letter to Senate supporters: see page 1 and page 2.

Ron Utt and Brian Riedl explain why this whole debate is just crazy--nobody knows for sure what this money is going to be used to do:

Under the circumstances, it is not clear what purpose the $700 million sought from federal taxpayers would serve. Would it compensate CSX for its valuable right of way, the property it will be giving up, and the nearly $300 million that it spent to repair the line following Hurricane Katrina? Would part of the proposed funding go to construct the new light rail system, or would that be part of a future federal earmark? Whatever they intend, Mississippi’s senators owe their colleagues and American taxpayers a detailed explanation of how this extraordinary sum of money—it would be the largest earmark in American history, according to a report by the Christian Science Monitor—would be spent.

Today, the Toledo Blade editorializes against the project:

If Mississippi can justify redeveloping the casino region with a beach boulevard, it should compete for federal money through the normal federal transportation-funding process. As it is, this project looks mostly like a grand giveaway to casino interests and real estate developers.

As with any federally funded project, the $700 million would pay only to relocate the rail line; it would simply be the precursor to requests to Washington for millions more to build the highway.

Sen. Tom Coburn is quoted in the Los Angeles Times on a similar point:

Coburn has pledged an effort to expunge "extraneous 'pork' projects and other nonemergency items" from the measure.

The Mississippi railroad project, he said, is "hardly a national emergency."

He also called it "ludicrous" for taxpayers to spend $700 million to re-route the rail line after its owner, CSX, spent more than $250 million to repair the line after Hurricane Katrina.

The Washington Post also notes the earmark and reports on an event that we attended today:

Drawing special scorn from watchdog groups and fiscal conservatives such as Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) is $700 million to move a railroad line along the Gulf Coast in Mississippi. Critics say the project is a gift to developers and casino interests, but it has powerful allies: Senate Appropriations Chairman Thad Cochran and Sen. Trent Lott, the former majority leader, both masters of the earmarking process, and both of Mississippi.

Conservative groups, including the Club for Growth and the Heritage Foundation, intend to highlight the special projects in a news conference today, and sparks are expected to fly on the floor this week, as conservative Republicans and politically minded Democrats gang up on the Senate bill as excessive.

Tim Chapman has some quotes from the event:

Congressman Tom Feeney...seemed to suggest that a divided Congress may be better than the current situation, saying a "stalemate would be better than eating ourselves to death."

Congressman Jeff Flake, referring to the infamous Railroad to Nowhere contained in the bill, said "once again the American taxpayer is getting railroaded."...

Marsha Blackburn: When she was in her district for recess the top three issues of concern to her consituents were "Out of control spending, illegal immigration and high gas prices."

Randy Neugebauer: "The emergency supplemental spending bill has become the new cookie jar in Congress...A lot of the items that are in this supplemental are NOT emergencies."

John Campbell: "We shouldn't be spending for an emergency unless the event was unanticipated and the need is urgent."

Some other good lines: Campbell likened fiscal discipline to a curfew and recommended a set of rules that "makes us get home by midnight." Also, David Keene of the American Conservative Union urged the audience to "Just say no" to wasteful government spending.

The Contra Costa Times also reports on the controversy:

Some critics have likened the railroad project to the funding request for the so-called "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska that generated public outcry last year.

And the fate of the Mississippi proposal has emerged as a key test of whether Congress is in the mood to crack down on approving tax dollars for such projects amid steep federal budget deficits.

However, Mississippi newspapers remain rigidly in favor of federal financing of this hometown project. Editorializes the Jackson Clarion-Ledger:

Those who have suffered from the massive storm of Aug. 29 that made two-thirds of Mississippi a disaster zone know better. Whether CSX should have rebuilt the line is a moot issue; the point is that by converted the line to a road and moving the line, greater and better commercial, residential and quality of life development can occur on the Coast.

Why rebuild what would be destroyed by another Katrina, if a better, more sound investment can be made? Isn't that the opposite of wasteful spending?

The New York Times gets an answer to that question from Heritage's Brian Riedl:

"Emergencies are not true emergencies when you're repairing highway backlogs that go back several years, when Congress is giving large handouts to farmers despite record farm incomes and when you're relocating a rail line" whose change of course was proposed decades ago, said Brian M. Riedl, a budget analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "That doesn't sound like an emergency to me."

Also, a word from AEI's Veronique de Rugy:

...supplemental bills amounted to "budget tricks" to evade spending limits. "We have been using supplementals to finance the war, and it might actually make sense the first year," she said. "But three or four years into the war, no war spending should be going through supplementals. It's not as if it's sudden, urgent and unforeseen, or temporary."

The showdown will come soon; CQToday reports that "The Senate is set to take up the supplemental appropriations measure on Tuesday [today], though a final vote on the bill might not come until next week." While the emergency spending bill is a high priority in the upcoming legislative period, BNA reports that there will likely be rough terrain ahead:

[Sen. Bill Frist’s budget aide Bill] Hoagland said the supplemental is likely to take up more than a week of the Senate's time, during which it is likely to become a vehicle for debating a number of political issues. "[I]t's going to be difficult," he said.

Many lawmakers have indicated they are readying amendments to take the bill's funding level even higher.

A Hill report concurs:

Few expect the conservatives to inflict serious damage to the bill’s bottom line, which the Appropriations Committee approved easily. And it is possible that money actually could be added before final passage.

Republican votes are angry over spending, editorializes the Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star, but the democrats probably wouldn't be any better. Congress's seniority system is the problem:

fear of an angry electorate should spur Congress to self-reform. Where to start? A good place would be both houses' seniority systems, which tend to institutionalize the profligate ways of Washington by keeping young Turks who want to shake up things out of the real action....

In the '70s, reports Slate's Jack Shafer, the congressional seniority system gave "disproportionate power" to Democratic elders expert in "pork dispensing." Republicans, alas, haven't so much reformed this practice as reaffirmed it--with gusto. Several trillion dollars later, the reverence for seniority is helping deepen the darkness over America's future.

The Chicago Tribune draws on Citizens Against Government Waste research in an editorialrunning through some of the "9,963 pork projects were inserted into 11 appropriation bills in fiscal year 2006."

Stephen Laffey reports on the Sparta Teapot Museum, recipient of $500,000 in government pork, in Human Events:

According to the museum's website, the Sparta Teapot Museum exposes "its visitors to an unexpected art form -- the teapot." Its prized Kamm Collection "is comprised of more than 6,000 teapots and has an estimated value exceeding $5 million," running the gamut from "traditional antiques, to classic production pieces, to one-of-a-kind artist-made works." These include such creative pieces as the Ruby Slipper Teapot and the Scorpion Float.

Lobbying reform, and the related issue of spending reform, continues to be a contentious issue. House Majority Leader John Boehner writes an op-ed in USA Today:

This week, the House will consider comprehensive changes designed to re-establish the sense of trust between the people and their government by reforming Congress and bringing greater transparency, disclosure and accountability to government. This measure focuses on bright lines of right and wrong and stiffens penalties for breaking the rules.

However, USA Today publishes a counterpoint:

Congress still doesn't get it. After more than a year of negative headlines about political corruption and money-soaked alliances with lobbyists, House leaders are weakening their already anemic excuse for reform.

They hope to pass the plan this week and then, with the glowing pride of grandees doling pennies to the poor, con the public into believing they're actually giving up enough of their prized perks to make a difference.

The Washington Post is similarly pessimistic:

Mr. Dreier's Rules Committee took an already weak House bill and made it weaker. From the version of the measure approved by the House Judiciary Committee, it dropped provisions that would require lobbyists to disclose fundraisers they host for candidates, campaign checks they solicit for lawmakers and parties they finance (at conventions, for example) in honor of members.

The Post seems oddly uninterested, however, in measures that would address the spending side of things, as opposed to, say, banning congressional travel or certain perks.

Another earmark scandal may be brewing, reports USA Today:

Sen. Arlen Specter obtained a $200,000 grant last year for a Philadelphia foundation represented by the son of one of Specter's top aides, the latest example of how the Pennsylvania Republican has helped clients of lobbyists related to members of his staff.

Also, accusations continue to swirl around Rep. Alan Mollohan, temporarily removed from the House Ethics Committee for shady earmarking. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Rep. Alan B. Mollohan, the West Virginia Democrat whose real-estate holdings and financial disclosures have drawn federal scrutiny, last year bought a 300-acre farm with the head of a small defense contractor that had won a $2.1 million contract from funds that the congressman added to a 2005 spending bill.

Finally, on long-term spending, Donald Luskin explains why Social Security “reform isn’t dead”:

It can’t die. Reform is inevitable, because the Social Security system really is in crisis, in the sense that the accounting mirage of the Trust Fund doesn’t hold any real assets to pay off the system’s obligations. Even if it did, the assets would be exhausted in a few short decades as the baby boom generation retires.

And look forward to the release of the reports of the Social Security and Medicare trustees, due out as soon as next week. Luskin's preview: "When the report of the Trustees finally comes out in a week or two, it will undoubtedly show the existing system’s continuing downward spiral into bankruptcy." Big surprise there.

Update: Oops--bit of a typo in the originally posted version of this. Up at the top, it said, "Funding for the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq qualifies and is fair game for a veto." Of course, that italicized text should have been "supplemental bill." This post is now corrected. (Thanks, David!)

Posted by Andrew Grossman at 02:35 PM in Federal Spending | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that some Philadelphia-area service stations are running on empty. See if you can figure out why:

As if rising prices weren't enough, the tanks have run dry at some Philadelphia-area service stations in the last few days as the refining industry stumbles through a change in the formulation of gasoline.

The conversion to ethanol was prompted by the federal Energy Policy Act of 2005, which left refiners vulnerable to groundwater contamination suits and mandated greater use of renewable fuels. The use of ethanol forced gasoline retailers to clean their tanks, remove all water from them and install extremely fine filters on their pumps.

(Emphasis ours)

So a government-mandated change in formulations, combined with the switch to government-mandated summer recipes, which differ, as mandated by government, between different regions are causing regional price spikes. Who could ever have seen this one coming?

Cynicism aside, there is something to be done about this sort of problem: strip away the expensive and complicated regulations that make it difficult for refineries to meet demand and that cause localized price spikes. How many summers of short-term high prices in Philadelphia, Chicago, and other cities do we need to see before Congress gets the idea?

The President, however, seems to understand the burden of gasoline regulation. But then again...

Posted by Andrew Grossman at 09:06 AM in Energy | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)