Omnibusting: Omnibus Spending Bill, Earmarks, Pork and Budget Gimmicks

Before the omnibus bill was released, The Heritage Foundation set five key benchmarks for determining whether the forthcoming bill would be the fiscally responsible. Brian Riedl explains why bill fails to meet four of those benchmarks.

Congress pledged to limit discretionary spending to President Bush’s $932 billion request and to cut the number of earmarks in half from the 2005 peak level. This omnibus bill breaks both pledges. With more than 11,000 earmarks costing approximately $20 billion, Congress decided to bust the budget by $20 billion through the use of gimmicks. Lawmakers should reject such irresponsible budgeting and eliminate the pork projects in order to offset any new spending. Otherwise, President Bush should veto this bill, and insist on a year-long continuing resolution that would likely save taxpayers more than $30 billion relative to the omnibus.

Much has been made of the omnibus bill fitting within the President’s $933 billion discretionary spending cap.  However, the bill contains at least $13.2 billion in additional gimmicks.  Adding to the $6.4 billion in “emergency” spending added to the Defense appropriations bill signed a month ago, the total overage comes to $19.6 billion.  The new $13.2 billion breaks down as follows:

–$2.0 billion in advanced appropriations in the Labor-HHS-Education bill;

–$3.7 billion in “emergency” veterans health funding in the Milcon/VA bill;

–$2.9 billion for “emergency” border security in the Homeland Security bill;

–$2.4 billion for various “emergency” provisions in the State/Foreign Ops bill;

–$1.0 billion for “emergency” drought relief (despite record farm incomes), wildfires, and others in the agriculture bill;

– $100 million in unprecedented “emergency” security spending for the GOP and Democratic national conventions, in the Commerce-Justice-Science bill; and

–$1.1 billion in other “emergencies”

This $19.6 billion brings discretionary spending to $952 billion, nearly as high as the Congressional Democrat’s original proposal.  Note that these gimmicks are on top of the $20 billion in domestic spending that the President had already agreed to. There is no reason this additional $19.6 billion should not be offset.