With Apologies to the Navy

26 April 2006



Emergency Spending Bill is $15 Billion More than Requested

The Bush administration and the GOP-controlled Congress like to talk about fiscal responsibility, but when it comes to actually spending the taxpayer’s money, drunken sailors on 48-hour liberty are more circumspect. It’s bad enough that the federal budget has been in a deficit since they ran Mr. Clinton out of town. What’s worse are these “emergency” bills that don’t even count toward the deficit. The one currently under discussion will cost $106.5 billion, almost $15 billion over Mr. Bush’s February request.

The American military is at war, and no nation can fight a war without spending money to do so. In addition, New Orleans is still more a memory than a city, and the Gulf Coast still hasn’t been cleaned up. These are extraordinary situations that require extraordinary expenditure. However, the government doesn’t require extraordinary accounting to deal with them.

By passing emergency spending bills, the people’s elected officials get to pretend that the country’s finances are better than they really are. The funding is done “off-budget.” However, the Congressional Research Service said in a report dated April 7:

the supplemental [that is, emergency spending bill] would add to the size of the U.S. budget deficit. The Administration does not seek any off-sets from other previously approved spending that could have the effect of reducing the supplemental’s impact on the deficit. Some Members [of Congress] argue that some or all of the supplemental appropriation should be offset, and although no specific proposals have emerged, the issue of rescinding existing spending to pay for the additional costs of the supplemental could become part of the congressional debate.
Included in the bill is a $500 million payment to Northrop Grumman from the Navy to help with business losses due to the effects of hurricanes on its Ingles Shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi. The company had private insurance for this. Also, the bill provides a $700 million appropriation to replace a coastal rail line with a coastal highway – a rail line that was just repaired after the hurricane damage to the tune of $300 million.

One would rather trust the finances of the nation to a handful of chief petty officers and sailors with an unlimited supply of beer than to let Congress get away with this. Mr. Bush needs to buy himself a veto pen and learn how to use it. The GOP is doing nothing but raising taxes on future generations of Americans.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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