BuckeyeBlog

As part of the debate over the Congressional budget resolution, Ohio Senator George Voinovich introduced an amendment to curb “emergency” spending. Trying to eliminate the abuse of this type of spending is long overdue.

The federal budget process is a complicated one. If Congress wants to spend money, it must comply with a variety of rules. However, there are a variety of loopholes that make federal spending easier. One of the most abused is “emergency” appropriations. By labeling something “emergency” spending, Congress can bypass ordinary rules and essentially spend money “off budget.”

Senator Voinovich’s office put this way:

If spending is designated as �emergency,� it is exempted from budget controls and spending limits. An example of the sort of emergency spending that concerns Sen. Voinovich is the designation of funding for the 2000 Census as emergency, even though the U.S. Constitution has required a census every 10 years since 1790.

Congressman Ron Paul describes it in these terms:

Congress funds the federal government through 13 enormous appropriations bills, but even an annual budget of more than $2 trillion is not enough to satisfy Washington�s appetite for new spending. As a result, a new category of spending bill has emerged, known as the �emergency supplemental� appropriation. There�s no real emergency, however; Congress simply needs a 14th spending bill as a grab bag filled with hundreds of pages of goodies for countless favored groups, industries, individual companies, and foreign governments. It�s common for dozens of amendments to be added to the supplemental bill, all with more money for somebody.

So-called emergency supplemental spending bills, once a rarity, have become the norm over the last ten years in Washington. There�s always some excuse why Congress cannot stick to its budget, so supplemental bills are passed to permit spending extra �off-budget� funds. �Emergency� spending now has become routine, planned spending.

Finding a way to curb this abuse of the budget process is an important step in restoring fiscal discipline.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 13th, 2008 at 3:06 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.