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

(Page 7 of 7)

/p> p class="Flargetext c2"> span class="c1"> o:p> /o:p> /span> /p> p class="Flargetext c2"> span class="c1">This year’s emergency spending bill, for instance, contains $118 million to bail out private fisheries, on top of tens of billions in disaster relief funds the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Small Business Administration are already paying to that industry. It also includes $335 million to subsidize “volunteer” work through AmeriCorps and a $703 million add-on for highway projects unrelated to the Gulf Coast—some of them in Hawaii and California. Those aren’t the only projects in the bill that aren’t anywhere near Iraq or the Gulf Coast: There are Army Corps of Engineers earmarks for North Padre Island, Texas; Sacramento, California; and water systems across Hawaii. 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">Expect more bills like this in the future. Waste is endemic in Congress, and the White House has refused to restrain the legislature’s spending explosion. Until that changes, politicians will still claim with straight faces that $500 million for farm and ranch subsidies or $500,000 for the Mississippi Children’s Museum qualify as “emergency” spending.

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Véronique de Rugy is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute..

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