Tag Archives: Citizens Against Government Waste

Some Good News From The Senate

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On Friday, The Washington Free Beacon reported that the Senate passed an amendment on Thursday renewing and codifying a Congressional ban on earmarking bills.

The article quotes Senator Ben Sasse who led the initiative to ban earmarks:

“The last thing taxpayers need is for the same politicians who racked up a $22 trillion national debt to go on an earmark binge,” Sasse said in a statement. “It’s pretty simple: Earmarks are a crummy way to govern and they have no business in Congress. Backroom deals, kickbacks, and earmarks feed a culture of constant incumbency and that’s poisonous to healthy self-government. This is an important fight and I’m glad that my Republican colleagues agreed with my rules change to make the earmark ban permanent.”

Earmarks have been banned before, but somehow keep cropping up again. In 2011 the Senate passed a temporary ban on earmarks. In 2017, the Senate voted to keep the ban in place. However, in the past, the ban has not necessarily accomplished much.

The article reports:

The Senate voted in 2017 to keep the ban in place, with a push led by former Sen. Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.). Flake launched an investigation in 2015 which found that, despite the 2011 ban, many earmarks had slipped through, with hundreds of millions spent on side projects, such as grape research and subsidies for a ballet theater in the wealthiest congressional district in America.

Similarly, a Citizens Against Government Waste report found that Congress had approved $5.1 billion in earmarks in 2016. In 2016, House Republicans attempted to undo earmark bans, but the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) rebuffed the effort, saying that it would inappropriate right after a “drain the swamp” election.

Earmarks are a tool to get bills passed that might not otherwise be passed. If a Senator is promised a new highway for his state in exchange for his vote, he might vote for whatever is being considered. However, earmarks make it possible to pass bills that are wasteful and would not otherwise pass. Banning earmarks is a really good idea.

The Pig Book Summary Is Out

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Every year Citizens Against Government Waste puts out a Congressional Pig Book Summary. The book summarizes the wasteful spending by Congress.

Here is an explanation of how programs are chosen for the honor of being in the book:

The projects in the 2016 Congressional Pig Book Summary symbolize the most blatant examples of pork. As in previous years, all items in the Congressional Pig Book meet at least one of CAGW’s seven criteria, but most satisfy at least two:

  • Requested by only one chamber of Congress;
  • Not specifically authorized;
  • Not competitively awarded;
  • Not requested by the President;
  • Greatly exceeds the President’s budget request or the previous year’s funding;
  • Not the subject of congressional hearings; or
  • Serves only a local or special interest.

Some examples:

$10,000,000 for high energy cost grants within the Rural Utilities Service (RUS). The RUS grew out of the remnants of the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Electrification Administration (REA) of the 1930s. The primary goal of the REA was to promote rural electrification to farmers and residents in out-of-the-way communities where the cost of providing electricity was considered to be too expensive for local utilities. By 1981, 98.7 percent electrification and 95 percent telephone service coverage was achieved. Rather than declaring victory and shutting down the REA, the agency was transformed into the RUS, and expanded into other areas.

…$60,000,000 for construction of research facilities at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). According to the legislation, the funding is to initiate “the design and renovation of its outdated and unsafe radiation physics infrastructure in fiscal year 2016.” Though the legislation does not designate a location for the funding, NIST’s Radiation Physics Division operates facilities in Boulder, Colorado, and Gaithersburg, Maryland.

…$1,150,800,000 for 28 earmarks for health and disease research under the Defense Health Program, which is a 7.8 percent increase in cost over the 27 earmarks worth $1,067,115,000 in FY 2015. Former Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-Okla.) November 2012 report, The Department of Everything, pointed out that the DOD disease earmarks added by Congress mean that “fewer resources are available for DOD to address those specific health challenges facing members of the armed forces for which no other agencies are focused.” According to the report, in 2010 the Pentagon withheld more than $45 million for overhead related to earmarks, which means those funds were unavailable for national security needs or medical research specifically affecting those serving in the military.

These are only a few examples from the book. The book is available online or to download. The next time Congress complains that it cannot cut the budget, take a look at this book.

The People Who Make Our Laws Can’t Even Follow Their Own Rules

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CBN News is reporting today that despite passing a law last year that made earmarks illegal, Congress passed more than 100 earmarks for 2014.

The article reports:

Every year, the Pig Book Summary blasts Congress for its wasteful pork barrel projects.

“There are 109 earmarks, costing taxpayers $2.7 billion in fiscal year 2014,” Thomas Schatz, with Citizens against Government Waste, told CBN News.

Congress has even passed millions in spending for agencies who didn’t want the money.

One example of an agency that did not want the money is the $90 million for M1 tanks the Pentagon insists it really doesn’t want.

The article further reports:

“The secretary of the Army said they don’t need to build more M1s. They want to delay this for four years and save $3 billion,” Schatz said. “There are 2,000 M1s sitting idle in the desert of California.”

Meanwhile, the Defense Department is getting $866 million to mostly duplicate research on the very same illnesses and diseases as the civilian sector.

“Breast cancer research can be done at the National Institutes of Health and it’s done –billions of dollars [for] other research done at other agencies,” Schatz charged.

Americans are pinching pennies to stay afloat in the so-called economic recovery, and Congress is borrowing money our children and grandchildren will have to pay back. This is ridiculous. It’s time to vote every Congressman out of office who has supported the runaway spending of recent years.

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