By David Hogberg on 11.18.05 @ 12:06AM
The Republican Congress is finding it impossible to kick its ugly habits.
Being a conservative in the limited government tradition is
getting a bit frustrating these days. To watch the Congress as of
late is to engage in self-flagellation.
Ask yourself: Would you rather try to pass a measly $54 billion
in spending cuts that represent 0.0001% of the federal budget over
the next few years or pull the teeth from an alligator? Having
participated in the blogosphere's PorkBusters project, I suspect that large,
predatory-animal dentistry might be a more productive career path.
PorkBusters asked participants to contact their Representatives and
Senators to ask them how they planned to offset aid for Hurricane
Katrina victims. While I was able to get a response from Senator
George Allen's office, my five or six calls each to Senator John
Warner's and Rep. Tom Davis's offices were never returned.
Recent events have done nothing to alleviate the pessimism I
felt due to my Congress members' non-responsiveness. Just last week
moderate "Republicans" in the House held up the federal budget that
contained the measly $54 billion in spending cuts until drilling in
ANWR was dropped. After ANWR was dropped, they held up the spending
cuts anyway. Adding insult to injury, these were Beltway-style cuts
-- that is, this wasn't a matter of receiving less money than in
previous years but, rather, a reduction in the rate of growth.
It gets worse. A source of mine tells me the conference report
for Labor and Health and Human Services is now held up because the
House and Senate conferees took almost all of the earmarks (a.k.a.
"pork") out and did not massively increase spending for next
year.
NOT ONLY IS much of Congress doing its best to avoid dealing with
overspending, certain parts are compounding the problem in silly
ways. Below are three such examples:
On Wednesday the House passed HR 856, the "Federal Youth
Coordination Act." Introduced by Republican Tom Osborne, it will
spend about $2 million from fiscal years 2007-2008 to establish a
"Federal Youth Development Council" whose duties will include a
report on the overlap and duplication among youth programs in
different federal agencies. This might not be the worst use of
taxpayer money, except that the Government Accountability Office
looked at this same problem ten years ago, finding that eight different agencies administered
forty-six youth development programs for a cost of over $5 billion
annually. Thus, this new bill will probably continue the
time-honored tradition of lots of government studies but little
action.
Next up is HR 1492, introduced by Bill Thomas. Passed yesterday
in the House, it would spend $38 million for "the preservation of
the historic confinement sites where Japanese Americans were
detained during World War II." Do we really need to spend money on
this while the budget is bleeding red ink? And even if it were in
the black, this should be the purview on private philanthropy. Yet
with groups like the Trust for Historic Preservation now wasting resources advocating on behalf of "smart
growth," it's probably little wonder that there is pressure for
government to handle this function.
Finally, there is HR 1065, which would usurp state power by
creating a Federal Boxing Commission. The CBO estimates this would
cost about $5 million annually. Now that Mike Tyson hasn't bitten
an ear recently, it's hard to see any justification for this at
all. Luckily, neither did the House, which voted it down yesterday.
However, this bill was the brainchild of Senator John McCain, who
is often vocal about deficits. Perhaps McCain should have asked for
it to be pulled to show support for spending cuts.
Before you get too discouraged, let me leave you with a bit of a
smile. Cynthia McKinney recently introduced the "Tupac Amaru Shakur Records Collection
Act of 2005" because all "Government records related to the life
and death of Tupac Amaru Shakur should be preserved for historical
and governmental purposes." One wonders whether she will introduce
a future piece of legislation for Biggy Smalls.
David Hogberg is a senior research analyst at the
Capital
Research Center. He also hosts his own website, Hog
Haven.
topics:
John McCain, Federal Budget, Earmarks, NATO
