Just in time for our last Weekly Wastebasket of 2015, the Congress hammered out a compromise spending bill for the current fiscal year – the one that is already 10 weeks old. Months of squabbling, the resignation of a Speaker of the House, and threats of a government shutdown have led to this: 2000+ pages of taxing and spending legislation, immediately dubbed the “Taxibus.” Whether it was a feat of strength or the airing of grievances, it was Festibus (okay Festivas) for the rest of us.

At TCS we’re known for adjusting our green eyeshades, pulling out our magnifying glasses and actually reading the legislation. And within hours of the bill being made public, we started writing and talking about it.

There is much not to like in the bill(s). For example, billions of dollars were directed to programs and weapon systems the Pentagon doesn’t want. The Coast Guard is forced to buy another cutter that – again – it doesn’t want. Sen. Cochran (R-MS) seems to be able to resurrect dollars from failed clean coal projects and send millions of them to a troubled clean coal plant in Mississippi. The fact that 40 percent of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers construction budget has been put into ill-defined pre-earmarked slush-y funds. And of course the fact that $622 billion in permanent and temporary tax expenditures that aren’t paid for are being tacked on to the package. For this and many other reasons we’re not supporting it.

But in keeping with the season we are trying to look for the good in everyone (and every bill). Here are a few items that we found.

The first thing we looked for is the infamous “Coal to Kaiserslautern” program. This was a decades-old boondoggle to ship anthracite coal from Pennsylvania to several U.S. military bases in Germany. After we gave this ridiculous idea the “Golden Fleece,” Representatives Jared Huffman (D-CA) and Tom McClintock (R-CA) offered a successful amendment to finally strip this provision from the Pentagon spending bill. There was no similar provision in the Senate version and so, technically, this matter was “non-conferenceable” and could not appear in the compromise version of the bill.

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But this isn’t our first trip to the coal mine, so we kept watch to make sure this complex and wasteful program didn’t “magically” reappear in the Taxibus. And it didn’t. Kudos to Congressmen Huffman and McClintock for killing this program. No American coal will appear in German stockings this Christmas.

And that’s not all the good that we found. During the summer the Congress was poised to stop a common sense directive to federal agencies that any federal investment (e.g. project or grant) had to be built two feet above the base flood elevation for that area (the 100-year floodplain or area that has a one percent chance of flooding in any given year). This is just common sense. Taxpayers have a right to expect that their investments will survive the next flood. And if states or localities don’t want to do it, don’t take the federal largesse. There is nothing wrong with strings attached to federal subsidies. To turn a phrase, there have been too many funded unmandates over the years. Thankfully, Congress agreed and instead of blocking the initiative, the rider gave clarity to the intent and actually strengthened it. Huzzah!

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We’ve railed against this miracle fund that seems to believe that new money is created by moving the cost of construction of a new submarine out of the Navy budget and into the budget for the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Well like illusionists, the Sea Based Deterrence Fund doesn’t really make the costs disappear, they just go up somewhere else. While the House and Senate Armed Services Committees (and a majority of the House) joined the David Copperfield fan club, the Senate stood firm and … Presto! there isn’t a dime in the bogus accounting fund.

As is often the case, there is a lot more wrong with this bill than right. And even with the examples we gave you the scales tilt the wrong way. But as an end of the year gift to you (the Wastebasket takes the last week of the year off) we thought we’d give you a few silver linings. Next year we intend to make them gold. 

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