In Congress, it’s a Pork-A-Rama
And Rand Paul’s annual Festivus report highlights $482.2 billion of waste
U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson offered amendments last week designed to cut approximately $9.8 billion in earmarks—otherwise known as pork—embedded in the $1.85-trillion omnibus spending bill ultimately passed by Congress, but a bipartisan coalition of Republicans and Democrats defeated the effort.
(Naturally. And some people wonder why a tiny squadron of conservatives is revolting in the House. Why drain the swamp anyhow—because what’s not to love about bacon and war!)
In a press conference, Johnson (R-Wisconsin) noted the irony of Republican support for the earmarks, given that the Senate GOP caucus was on record as opposing them:
There are, let me get the exact numbers, $9.8-billion worth of earmarks. Thousands of individual projects here, both Democrat and Republican. It is interesting to note on the Republican side, we actually have a conference resolution that we don’t support earmarks.
Resolution, schmesolution. The GOP supported more than $4 billion of earmarks, while Democrats collected $5.4 billion of earmarks. To say it another way, the GOP gobbled up 42 percent of the pork. Johnson said:
This is the gateway drug to the massive deficit spending, to the mortgaging of our children’s futures. It has to stop, which is why I’m going to offer an amendment to eliminate all those earmarks in this massive omnibus spending bill.”
That amendment failed, of course, as did Johnson’s earlier effort to reject the omnibus spending bill altogether and to pass a short-term continuing resolution (CR) instead. A CR would have kept the government running and allowed time for Republican lawmakers—the GOP will take the majority in the House just as soon as they clean the blood up off the floor from this week’s unfortunate but creepily mesmerizing domestic incident—to craft an alternative budget, presumably with less spending and pork.
Presumably.
But that did not happen, leading Johnson to complain that the 535 members of Congress “literally are the board of directors of the largest financial entity in the world and we never talk numbers”:
I think what I found most disconcerting about this discussion, this debate, this process is the whistling past the graveyard nature of it. We’re talking about this is a big win in terms of, you know, conservatism and for Republicans that we’re getting a greater increase in defense spending.
But the win was illusory, Johnson said:
One of the things I’ve been pointing out, because of the massive inflation, because a dollar that we all held at the start of the Biden administration is worth less than 88 cents, the $858 billion we’re getting on defense is literally worth only $754 billion in January of 2021 dollars. That’s how much inflation has eroded the value of all spending, including defense spending.
But nobody talks about the numbers, the senator said again:
I thought it was interesting last week, because I was asking my colleagues and quite honestly a number of you reporters, just the simple question—do you know how much we spent last year? And the blank stares I got from most people. I’m still asking that question. I think people are getting a little educated, so now they’re starting to answer it but the answer is $6.3 trillion last year. To compare that to before the pandemic, in 2019, we spent $4.4 trillion.
Something’s got to give, Johnson said:
At some point, we do hit a debt crisis–and I would argue, you know, 7 percent-plus inflation with really no ending in sight is certainly an inkling of what that debt crisis is going to look like, and how that is going to devastate Americans in all areas of the income spectrum, but particularly people at the lower end who spend their money, their disposable income on things that have actually risen at a higher rate than 7 percent.
While Johnson focused on earmarks, he called the entire omnibus bill an abomination:
There is no way anyone had time to read all 4,155 pages, much less comprehend how the massive deficit spending and major policy elements will negatively impact Americans. This takes Washington dysfunction and cynicism to an entirely new level. We were unable to amend the bill to eliminate at least $9.8 billion in earmarks or preserve Title 42 as the only restriction to Biden’s open border policy. Once again, Congress easily waived the ‘PAYGO’ discipline to enable massive deficit spending to continue. We are mortgaging our children’s future and a majority of the members of Congress couldn’t care less. I voted no.
The PAYGO budgeting rule, or pay-as-you-go, requires that mandatory spending increases be offset by tax increases or other spending cuts.
Meanwhile, Happy Festivus …