Congress Shows Little
Interest in Budget-Cutting Measures
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=14152
Written By: John Berthoud
Published In: Budget & Tax News
Publication Date: January 1, 2004
Publisher: The Heartland Institute
According to the latest BillTally study released in
late November by the National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF), just 26
members of the 107th Congress had 2002-2003 legislative agendas that would
reduce overall federal spending. By contrast, 32 lawmakers sought to raise the
federal budget by more than $1 trillion--the most lopsided margin against
budget-cutters in BillTally’s 12-year history.
“Taxpayers
hoping to see federal spending restraint will be disappointed to learn that the
107th Congress took a long holiday from this task,” said NTUF senior policy
analyst and study author Demian Brady. “When special
interests knocked on Congress’s door asking for tax-funded treats, most
lawmakers were willing to oblige even when it wasn’t Halloween.”
As Stephen
Moore of the Club for Growth recently asked in an article for the Washington
Times, “Where is the fiscal outrage?” Moore blamed “the recent
spending trends of fiscal conservatives” in both parties who at one time could
be relied on to keep Congress in check. “This year [2003] was one of the worst
years for fiscal conservatives in many moons,” wrote Moore. “The federal budget
grew by more than $150 billion--more than twice as much as any year that Bill
Clinton was in the White House--and deficit spending eclipsed $300 billion, a
10-year high.”
And it all
took place with the GOP firmly ensconced at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. The White House gets
some of the blame for allowing Congress to break the bank. “George Bush doesn’t
really have an anti-Big Government bone in his body,” said Moore. “Compassionate
conservatism means never having to say no.”
“The results
of sponsorship records during the 107th Congress show that there is indeed a
difference between Republicans and Democrats: One party proposes bigger
government, while the other party proposes much bigger government,” Brady
concluded. “For taxpayers who prefer prudence to profligacy, reversing this
trend will remain their top concern.”
BillTally is a cost accounting system that computes a net annual
agenda for each Member of Congress and has done so since 1991. The results are
based on each Member’s individual sponsorship and cosponsorship
of pending legislation. The study offers a unique look at the fiscal behavior
of lawmakers, free from the influence of committees, party leaders, and rules
influencing floor votes.
All cost
estimates for bills are obtained from third-party sources or calculated from
neutral data. Within the 107th Congress, BillTally
identified a record-high number of bills as having a fiscal impact of at least
$1 million--1,186 measures in the House and 851 in the Senate. Among Brady’s
findings:
- A record-low 26 Representatives sponsored bills
that, if enacted all at once, would reduce federal spending; not a single
Senator had a net budget-cutting agenda. As recently as the 104th
Congress, a comfortable majority in both chambers could claim to sponsor
net spending reductions.
- For the first time ever, BillTally
found individual Representatives (32 in all) who would raise federal
spending by at least $1 trillion (50 percent of current outlays) annually.
The House average was $222.9 billion, while the average Senator would
boost the budget by $92.9 billion per year.
- In the House, nearly 24 bills to increase federal
spending were introduced for every bill to cut spending. In the Senate the
ratio was 36:1, while the combined total for both chambers was 28:1.
- House Democrats called for an average of $417.6
billion in new spending, nearly 13 times more than House Republicans
($32.3 billion). Annualized over 10 years, that level of increase ($4.2
trillion) is more than twice the size of the tax cuts passed in 2001 and
2003 combined ($1.7 trillion).
- Both political parties in the House proposed
agendas that were seven times higher than their average 106th Congress totals.
In the Senate, the spending sponsorship gap was only somewhat narrower
($150.9 billion for Democrats vs. $34.2 billion for Republicans).
NTUF is the
research affiliate of the 350,000-member National Taxpayers Union.