You Spent My Money for What?
Congress is set up whereby 12 subcommittees of the Appropriations Committee of each chamber debate and present ordinary appropriations to set the federal budget for the year.
Those 12 subcommittees produce one, discretionary funding bill per year.
The last several decades have seen what are called Omnibus spending bills where one or more of those 12 appropriation proposals are combined in one bill. The reasons these Omnibus bills have become so popular in Congress is because:
- by including measures that the president might veto if they were submitted for signature on their own, but can be pressured into signing an omnibus bill that includes those measures.
- it’s easier to get away with putting what are called earmarks in an omnibus bill.
Those two reasons could be condensed to one in some instances, but many times not.
An earmark is a provision inserted into a discretionary spending appropriation bill that directs funds to a specific recipient while circumventing the merit-based or competitive funds allocation process.
Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), a non-profit, non-partisan organization that annually publishes the Congressional Pig Book and keeps track of earmarks – identified 274 earmarks costing $16B in the original 2020 ‘omnibus budget’ appropriations.
That was before the first COVID relief bill in April 2020 which contained numerous earmarks including $300M for the National Endowment for the Arts, $300M for the National Endowment for the Humanities and $35M for the Kennedy Center. The second Covid relief bill signed in December 2020 included many more unrelated appropriations including: $10M for “gender programs” in Pakistan; another $40 million for the Kennedy Center; $10B to loan forgiveness to the United States Post Office; $14B for mass transit programs, $10B for state highways; $1B for Amtrak; $15B for live entertainment venues, cultural institutions, and independent movie theaters; $82B to K-12 schools and $23B to colleges and universities.
All this under the guise of helping the common folk through the economic collapse generated by mandated shutdowns resulting in the loss of millions of jobs and people’s livelihoods. Most everyone got a check – free money – so shut up! “That supposedly gave them license to fund some pork.
The list of appropriations for stuff unrelated to a specific bill – or more importantly with the entire country in mind – is too long to catalog here. Suffice to say many lobbyists earn their salaries.
Switching gears to annual funding of independent agencies created by our government, there are 67 of these entities ranging from the African Development Foundation to Indoor Air Quality to the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
In addition, there are 258 Sub-Agencies and Bureaus ranging from the Administration for Children and Families to the Multifamily Housing Office to the Women’s Bureau.
If you’re interested in what organizations make up these two categories, click on the following web site: https://www.usa.gov/branches-of-government
There may be 10-20 entities in each category that you can make a case for federal funding. That’s all.
I couldn’t find a breakdown of the funding involved but suffice to say there is at least multiple hundreds of billions being spent for staff and operations. I would go on to express doubt there any members of Congress you could ask a specific question about the vast majority of agencies and bureaus on those lists as to how much money has been appropriated to any of them and what the role and results of the funding provided gives to you and me.
If that speculation is correct, then how many entities and commensurate funding is vital to the interests of congressional constituents or to the country?
Yet here we are – financially unable to generate enough revenue to fund everything the government is doing – but doing it anyway.
So, we have members of Congress with little hesitation to add (and hide) expensive earmarks to ‘omnibus’ spending bills to making appropriations to a multiplicity of entities which 99% of the American public have no idea what they are or what they do.
Congress plays their games, titling bills that sound straightforward but include a lot of stuff unrelated to what they call it – and scratching each other’s back by making deals with each other: “I’ll vote for your pet project is you vote for mine.” What’s worse is when the majority Party ‘buys’ the vote of a member who is opposed to a specific bill by including something the member wants.
The millions add up to billions and billions become trillions and most of us don’t have a clue about what these people we give license to spend are doing with large chunks of our money.
It’s time we insist earmarks and riders are not be allowed and eliminated.
Let’s call it what it is – corruption.
Taking our money and spending it for stuff the majority of us don’t want or even care about borders on the criminal.
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Have a great and prosperous week.
Hug somebody.
References:
https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/50/yes-government-creates-wealth/
https://www.cagw.org/reporting/pig-book
https://www.usa.gov/branches-of-government
SPIDER Bites
The June issue of Florida Trend carried reports on China’s “talent recruitment” program paying US researchers to hand over work often funded by American taxpayers. A number of these people have been indicted – including several in Florida. Intellectual property is being stolen here by a country that is not our friend. The FBI director is quoted as saying the issue is widespread and alive in virtually every FBI office.
Gov. DeSantis signed legislation last week which bans biological males from competing on female sports teams in Florida high schools and colleges. Having to legislate this commonsense and fair requirement shows how crazy and misguided some in our society have become, including the NCAA. It is not controversial, it’s fundamental respect and fairness.
NY is still clinging to passé, non-scientific, unconstitutional rules regarding COVID, including now a “vaccine passport” or proof of negative test to attend different size group/sporting events. Restaurants that want to open without hassle are complying. You still have to follow ‘guidance’ on social distancing, masks and handwashing. You don’t have to prove you’re a registered Democrat to participate in NY society, but that may be on the state’s future agenda. Want to move there? Real estate prices are declining?
The University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index last week fell to 82.9 from April’s reading of 88.3. The major factor in the drop was consumer concern about a surge in inflation, director Richard Curtin said.
Negotiations on President Biden’s $1.7T “infrastructure” bill (reduced from $2.3T) are not going well. Republicans want the package to stick strictly to physical infrastructure such as roads, bridges, airports and broadband expansion, not electric vehicles, home caregiving or other so-called “human infrastructure” that Biden has proposed.
By the way, the southern border is closed. The Texas governor declaring a ‘state of disaster’ last week for his 34 border counties was simply political, not based on real numbers. Believe it!
OK, that’s enough. Ransom/extortion-bent hackers are blackmailing more and more business operations in the US – large and small. Cyber Security Ventures reports ransomware is occurring every 11 seconds – up 97% in the past two years. U. of Florida Health reported a hack last week. If there’s a threat to national security it’s this ballooning problem, and it’s time we get a handle on it. How about putting a solution in the infrastructure bill?
