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

The Heritage Foundation’s Brian Riedl discusses the explosion of earmarks and the budget gimmicks included in the fiscal 2008 omnibus spending bill in a segment on Fox News.

Sen. Jim DeMint’s office has compiled the following top 10 list of reasons to oppose the omnibus.

1. Contains more than 11,000 wasteful pork projects, second highest in history
2. Overspends by $24.3 billion in gimmicks, largest spending bill in history
3. Weakens border security, reduces fencing
4. Cuts national security to pay for liberal social programs
5. Cuts abstinence funding; increases Planned Parenthood funding
6. Cuts labor oversight; increases funding to labor unions
7. Cuts funding for U.S. Marshals Service that enforces sex offender registry
8. Allows government to sue businesses that require English in the workplace
9. Spends millions to help solve energy problems … in North Korea
10. Increases funding for National Endowment for the Arts

Earlier today, Heritage released its own top 10 list of the biggest problems with the bill.

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.