The Federal Budget's Long Emergency

Got a boondoggle you're not proud of? Stick it in a supplemental appropriations bill.

Veronique de Rugy from the December 2006 issue

div class="bodytext"> p class="Flargetext c2"> span class="c1">Will giving $150 million to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration help win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? How about spending $500 million to repair a shipyard and an extra $2.3 billion for avian flu preparedness, on top of the $3.8 billion already appropriated for that purpose? Congress and the White House think so. All those expenditures are part of a $94.5 billion supplemental spending bill for the war on terror and hurricane relief signed by President Bush in June. o:p> /o:p> /span> /p> p class="Flargetext c2"> span class="c1"> o:p> /o:p> /span> /p> p class="Flargetext c2"> span class="c1">Politicians may cry crocodile tears about deficit spending, but their actions demonstrate that they remain addicted to big government. The Republican Congress that has expanded federal spending by 45 percent since fiscal year 2001, more than doubled education spending, and enacted insanely expensive agriculture, highway, energy, and prescription drug bills is still bingeing on our tax dollars. But instead of working through the regular appropriations process, Congress is hiding behind “emergency” supplemental bills.