Federal Budget and Tax Policy

FY2004 Omnibus Database
Written by Keith Ashdown
Database Produced by Austin Clemens and Aileen Roder with Erich Zimmermann and Keith Ashdown

Introduction

The Senate will take up the FY 2004 Omnibus Appropriations bill next week with gloomy federal budget clouds on the horizon. And yet, despite a record federal budget deficit of $500 billion predicted for FY04, lawmakers are still suffering from an irrational case of "budget surplus fever."

If the seven spending bills rolled into this year's $328.1 billion Omnibus are any indication, FY2004 will be an historic year for congressional earmarking. There are 7,931 earmarks in the Omnibus bill at a cost of $10.7 billion. This does not even include the already-passed Energy & Water and Defense appropriations bills that are traditionally loaded with congressional earmarks.

The Omnibus contains thousands of earmarks, with something for every congressional district in the nation. From a ballet school in Philadelphia to a bus project for Mickey Mouse at Disneyland in Anaheim, this bill has more grease than a fast-food restaurant. YMCAs, museums, county libraries, charter schools and abstinence education - they are all getting a piece of the action. With the federal treasury running on empty, this bill is a budgetary train wreck that will only deepen the nation's fiscal woes.

As lawmakers try to buy votes with earmarks and pork for their districts, the Omnibus bill is one heck of a kickoff for the 2004 campaign season. There are thousands of provisions in the bill and no one has a clue about where the money is going except for appropriators. The federal budget is Greek to most Americans, so our only choice is to believe that our elected officials are spending our hard-earned tax dollars in a responsible fashion. Very few of us truly know how the money Congress appropriates affects our neighborhood, community, and the greater good.

This database was produced to help the average American navigate the federal budget.

Historical levels of Earmarking

Although earmarking is as old as the budget-making process itself, according to Rep. David Obey (D-WI), the senior Democratic House appropriator, congressional earmarking "has gotten incredibly out of control." The biggest problem is that earmarking federal funds takes the objectivity and fiscal discipline out of the budget-making process. A project's merit should win it government backing, not whether its proponents have friends with political muscle on an appropriations committee. This database clearly demonstrates that the home states of senior appropriations committee members (such as West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Alaska) benefit greatly; while states, which do not have appropriations committee representation (such as Wyoming), do not.

A comparison of state and local earmark "returns" can tell a lot about the power of the appropriators. For example, Louisville, Kentucky receives more earmarks than Delaware, Vermont, Nebraska, or Wyoming. Seattle receives more earmarked funds than almost half the states in the nation. Sen. Patricia Murray (D-WA) is the ranking member of the Senate subcommittee responsible for transportation appropriations and Rep. Anne Northup (R-KY), who represents Louisville, is Vice-Chair of the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies appropriations subcommittee.

Earmarking has increased exponentially in the past several years. The FY 1995 Transportation appropriations bill contained only 322 earmarks at a cost of $1.5 billion; the Transportation section of the FY 2004 Omnibus has 2,179 earmarks at a cost of $5.7 billion. The FY 1995, Commerce-Justice-State appropriations bill contained 45 earmarks totaling $104 million; the Commerce-Justice-State section of the FY 2004 Omnibus bill has 1,137 earmarks at a cost of $1.9 billion.

Appropriations bills have become so heavy with earmarks that congressional staff can barely record them all, let alone develop a functional way to evaluate the legitimacy of particular programs. With record levels of earmark requests, Congress is not capable of prioritizing funds in a thoughtful manner.

Earmarking also financially micromanages the agency budgets and prevents them from meeting performance goals. When we continue to limit agencies budgets through earmarking, we put them in a budgetary straitjacket.

A growing concern is that federal agencies do not have the oversight capacity to determine whether the recipients of these earmarks will perform any of the promised services. Agencies have no authority to audit the recipients of earmarked funds, and because earmarks are not competitively awarded, no performance standards are established that could be used to measure the programs' success. In other words, it may be just as easy and effective for the agencies to hand out blank checks for congressional offices to pass along to their favorite programs or causes.

Methodology

To create the Omnibus database, Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS) used the final version of the FY 2004 Omnibus bill (H.R. 2673, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2004) and its associated conference report (108-401) exclusively. Provisions directing money to one state, or where the money is known to primarily benefit one state are listed as a line item (earmark) in the database. Exceptions were made for provisions that are required by previous appropriations or legislation.

If the bill does not specify a project's geographical location, TCS conducted research to locate the project. In cases where the project could not be found or it was impossible to be certain about its location, the project location is listed as unknown (UNKN). For projects where only the state, but not county or city, is specified, TCS did not conduct additional research. Therefore, the county and city columns cannot be considered comprehensive and a blank does not indicate that TCS could not locate the project; only that the bill did not give a city or county location.

Some earmarks in the bill direct funds to multiple states. In these cases, the earmark is split evenly among the listed states. In cases where an earmark goes to a nation-wide private institution, the earmark is attributed to the state in which that institution is headquartered. Finally, in cases where it is known that a few states will accrue most of an earmark's benefits, but the exact states involved or the degree to which they will benefit cannot be determined, the earmark is labeled as miscellaneous (MISC). In all cases, as much additional information as possible has been provided in the notes column.

All overseas projects are labeled international (INT) and all projects in U.S. territories are labeled UST. When possible, these projects' exact locations are specified in the notes column.

Legislators are noted in the champion column only if they released a statement claiming credit for that specific provision. The champion column is not comprehensive. A blank in the champion column does not mean that no legislator claimed credit.

For more information, contact Keith Ashdown at keith@taxpayer.net