Despite all the bellyaching over sequestration, Washington is doing little to change the federal spending diet that brought us to this point. In fact, a number of options on the legislative menu would actually expand the appetite for deficit spending while doing nothing to trim our bulging national debt. 

For example, agriculture special interests have re-emerged this spring to demand a bigger piece of the budget pie. In the farm bill, they’re pushing a number of potentially budget-busting “shallow loss” dishes with innocuous lo-cal names like ARC, SCO, STAX, and RLC. These belly busters would spoon out taxpayer dollars when agricultural businesses miss their income projections by as little as 10 percent—even if they’re still turning a profit. Lawmakers are also cherry-picking folks they want to get better seats at the table, with special mandates for federally subsidized crop insurance policies for producers of catfish, peanuts, popcorn, and poultry. All this in spite of agriculture having experienced—even before you count crop insurance payouts from the drought—its second most profitable year in a generation, a mark it’s expected to beat this year. The agriculture committees should work at making the agricultural safety net more cost-effective and transparent, not simply expanding the entrees at a taxpayer-subsidized buffet.

Turning to energy policy, a few more dishes will load taxpayers up on empty spending calories. The Energy Department (DOE)’s Title XVII Loan Guarantee program continues to saddle taxpayers with risky investments that Wall Street won’t stomach. Yet DOE just announced plans to finalize an $8 billion loan guarantee for a nuclear reactor in Georgia this summer, despite the project’s numerous cost overruns and technical challenges. The closed-door deal is years in the making, but instead of pulling the plug, DOE continues to keep our $8 billion handout on the table. We’ve already seen what happened when the $500 million dollar Solyndra project went bust: Taxpayers can’t afford to risk billions on this risky reactor. And it’s not just loan guarantees. DOE’s Inspector General recently released an audit report detailing the indigestion caused by the Industrial Carbon Capture and Storage program. At a time when agencies need to do more with less, DOE is actually reducing beneficiaries’ share of costs for flailing projects that bit off more than they could chew.

But no current legislation leaves a more bitter taste in a fiscal conservative’s mouth than the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) passed by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. There is a legitimate need to invest in our nation’s ports, rivers, and water systems. Yet the appetite of these projects’ beneficiaries (states, cities, port authorities, barge companies) to pay for them is shallow. This is why the federal government established consistent rules for sharing costs with beneficiaries in 1986. It turns out that when a project beneficiary has to contribute their share to the potluck, they are less inclined to super-size the project, or even find that they’re not even hungry.

WRDA is chock full of changes that would increase the tab for federal taxpayers.  It makes taxpayers responsible for maintaining ports up to 50 feet deep (the Feds now pick up 100% of the cost down to 45 feet, with local ports kicking in half the costs for maintenance at deeper levels). It also would make federal dollars available for dredging not just the harbor channel, but private berths. It’s as if your city decided to not just plow snow from the road, but also from your driveway, for free. It allows the transfer of excess non-federal cost share—when the value of the land a city, or state provides for a project exceeds the required dollar amount for that project—to other projects, which could keep some deadbeat projects alive. And a number of provisions appear narrowly tailored to relieve costs for a narrow set of communities.

Washington will never trim its debt waistline unless it does more with less. Requiring those who benefit from federal dollars to put some of their own skin in the game is an effective way to ensure good investments. Washington needs to respond to sequestration by making hard decisions, saying no, and pushing back from the table, not by turning the budget into a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos.