Emergency Spending Bill Sets Stage for Budget “Train Wreck”

The chaotic, undisciplined Congress that produced the bloated, pork-filled emergency spending bill seems on track for a budget train wreck this fall.

Republicans were “sticking our snouts in the trough just like the Democrats,” Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) said in the Washington Post on May 24.

Taking advantage of legitimate emergencies in Kosovo, Central America and the Midwest, House and Senate leaders did three things. First, they added numerous pork-barrel spending items of questionable merit, such as $2.2 million for sewers for the Winter Olympics.

Next, they ran an end-run around the overall budget caps. They did this by stuffing billions of dollars of regular spending into the emergency bill which does not count against the caps.

Finally, they added several anti-taxpayer riders – legislative provisions that grant special favors – such as allowing big oil companies to underpay royalties on oil pumped from federal lands.

If committee and party leaders continue this sloppy, anti-taxpayer approach to writing spending bills this summer and fall, it will result in legislative gridlock and huge, pork-filled bills that nobody has read.

Here are some of the provisions in the final conference report for H.R. 1141, the FY99 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Bill, that should not have been included:

    * Rider that lets big oil underpay royalties to taxpayers by $66 to $100 million per year.

    * Rider that stalls Interior Department reform regulations that would get mining companies to pay for their own cleanups.

    * Agricultural Marketing Service – $145 million – for strengthening markets, income and supply.

    * $70 million for the livestock assistance program (including reindeer).

    * $23 million for anti-narcotics drug research and development programs.

    * $1.3 million for costs of the World Trade Organization Ministerial Meeting in Dec. 99.

    * $3.76 million for the House Page Dormitory.

    * $29 million for Postal Service reimbursements

    * $2.5 million for the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas.

    * $2.2 million for sewers and infrastructure for the 2002 Olympics to Wasatch County, UT.

    * $1.5 million for purchase of water to restore water levels at the San Carlos Lake in AZ.

    * Allows use of $1 million for the processing Powder River Basin for coal bed methane permits.