Yesterday the Daily Caller reported that according to the Democrats in the Senate an appropriations bill about the pass in the Senate includes a spending cut of $1 billion from last year. Sounds great–until you actually do the math.
Senator Jeff Sessions pointed out some problems with the bill:
He lamented that spending for disaster relief would increase from $101 million to $2.7 billion dollars. Sessions called such money a “slush fund” because it could be appropriated without being counted toward the total spending.
“Why?” Sessions asked. “Well, it’s a disaster, and disaster spending doesn’t count. Don’t you know?”
Sessions’ second concern was the mandatory spending, which is another chunk of funding that Sessions said “the bill’s sponsors say you should not count … they insist that mandatory spending is not under the control [of] appropriators.”
According to the Budget Committee Republican staff’s numbers, the mandatory appropriations would rise from just over $109 billion to just over $117 billion, for an increase of $8 billion.
In total, Republicans say, that amounts to a $9.4 billion increase, none of which is counted toward the final sum, a fact Sessions called “logic that only exists in Washington.”