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Emergencies Are Not Pork-Barrel Buffets

A version of this blog post appeared as a press release from the American Conservative Union.

No emergency left behind

ALEXANDRIA, VA— The American Conservative Union, the nation’s oldest and largest grassroots conservative lobbying organization, today joined with five sister groups—the National Taxpayers Union, Citizens against Government Waste, the Club for Growth, the Heritage Foundation and Americans for Tax Reform—to urge Congress to purge all pork and unrelated spending from the 2006 supplemental appropriations bill.

Last week, President Bush asked Congress for $92 billion for HR 4939, the 2006 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Hurricane Recovery. Whereas the House complied with this budget, the Senate is demanding an additional $14 billion.

“Senate appropriators are using tragedy to blackmail the president into signing off on tens of billions of dollars above and irrelevant to his request,” explained David A. Keene, chairman of ACU. “In the Senate Appropriations Committee, wars and hurricanes are apparently golden opportunities to rationalize pet projects. Need a highway in Kauai, Hawaii? Then deem it ‘urgent,’ concoct a connection to the Gulf reconstruction, and stuff its funding into a $100 billion bill. Call it the No Emergency Left Behind Act.”

In recent years, Congress has increasingly abused the supplemental appropriations process to ram through pork-barrel spending that cannot stand on its own merits, financially or politically. Today, the congressional definition of an “emergency” encompasses such dire needs as subsidizing profitable agribusinesses, to the tune of an additional $4 billion, on top of an annual $25 billion; rerouting a recently repaired and completely functional railroad in Mississippi, at a cost of $700 million, to benefit coastal developers and the casino industry; and a $1.5 million grant to the Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies.

“How large does the Republican majority need to be before Republicans start acting like the responsible stewards of taxpayers’ money we thought we were electing?” asked Keene. “Indeed, it’s an open question whether Republicans today would exercise greater fiscal responsibility as the minority rather than the majority.”