OPINION:
Spring break is so, like, over. Members of Congress have returned from their town-hall meetings, junkets, fundraisers and listening tours this week. So, make no mistake about it; that means that the holidays are over for taxpayers as well.
There are a number of contentious issues facing the House and Senate, which could mean new, duplicative and inefficient programs, more needless regulation, and more opportunities for pork-barrel spending. Taxpayers will need to be extremely vigilant.
First up will be the emergency spending bill to fund the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, scheduled for markup in mid-April. A March 2008 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report pointed out a pernicious trend: Supplemental bills have become reliable magnets for egregious pork projects whose sponsors want to evade the normal appropriations process. From 1987 until 1996, supplemental bills averaged less than $20 billion annually. In the decade since then (1997-2006), there has been a dramatic fivefold escalation in supplemental spending to an average of about $100 billion annually.
Many of the projects do not even come close to qualifying as emergencies. The GAO found that more than $31 billion of the funding was “clearly incongruent” with the Office of Management and Budget’s definition of “sudden,” “urgent,” or “unforeseen.” Some federal accounts have come to rely upon routine emergency funding (only Congress could develop such a notion), which means that this funding doesn’t have to compete against other needs for limited resources.
The upcoming supplemental will almost certainly follow that pattern. A spokesperson for House Appropriations Chairman David Obey, Wisconsin Democrat, told CQ Daily that the bill is likely to increase domestic spending over the levels in previous supplemental bills for the war, allowing “Democrats to address unmet needs in an election year and… attract votes for the package.”
Congress will also be diving headfirst into an ill-advised housing bailout. The most recent bipartisan offering, the $15 billion Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008, features, among other provisions, $4 billion in grants to local governments, $100 million for credit counseling programs, and $6 billion in emergency tax breaks to homebuilders and other mortgage industry actors. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, Massachusetts Democrat, has an even more expansive plan that would tap taxpayers for up to $300 billion to refinance mortgages for homeowners who could not resist signing up for unaffordable mortgages. His plan calls for the government to guarantee the refinancing, which means that taxpayers would have to absorb any of the losses on those already unstable mortgages.
On top of this exploitation of taxpayers, Congress is unlikely to pass vital legislation to establish a viable regulator for the nations’ two secondary mortgage market giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The two companies now own or guarantee $4.9 trillion in mortgage debt, 76 percent of the nation’s home mortgage market. They have barely emerged from under the cloud of their accounting scandals, yet nevertheless have been permitted to enter the jumbo mortgage market under the dubious claim that they will provide more liquidity. Expanded powers without the necessary reforms will exacerbate, not mitigate, the problems in the housing markets.
Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, has been hinting at her plans to launch a national infrastructure bank to develop public-private investments for large transportation projects. She has called her idea “much bigger than a stimulus” bill. Such visions of grandeur in transportation usually lead to a diminution of taxpayers’ hard-earned cash, including more Bridges to Nowhere.
Speaking of pork, the Senate failed to agree to a one-year moratorium on earmarks, meaning it is open season to feed at the trough for the fiscal year 2009 appropriations bills. It remains to be seen whether next year’s appropriations bills will exceed the 11,610 projects worth $17.2 billion that CAGW will be exposing in the 2008 Congressional Pig Book, which was released on April 2.
Beyond the usual museums, theaters, bike paths, and streetscapes that are likely to appear in the 2009 spending bills, there is the potential for a massive earmark in the form of a special multibillion gift to the Boeing Corporation as “compensation” for losing the $35 billion refueling tanker contract to Northrop Grumman.
CAGW’s 2007 Porker of the Year, Rep. John Murtha, Pennsylvania Democrat, has threatened to stop the contract dead in its tracks; other members have been contemplating dividing up the contract despite the Air Force’s decision following an apparently open, fair and competitive procurement process. Since Boeing originally received a no-bid $23 billion tanker lease through the appropriations process in fiscal year 2003, it would not be surprising to see one or more members of Congress try once again to usurp the procurement process.
While families around the country go back to work and school, they should keep a close watch on their wallets as Congress comes back to the nation’s capital.
Tom Schatz is president of Citizens Against Government Waste.
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