Republicans' Last Spree?
by Brian Riedl

Two new Heritage Foundation papers warn taxpayers that the remaining appropriations bills, as currently written: A) overflow with pork; and B) threaten to bust the budget by $32 billion.

These bills will be the last acts of the lame duck Republican Congress.

1) Despite tough-on-pork rhetoric the final 11 appropriations bills as presented following the election contained as many as 10,000 earmarks. "Congress Returns to Spending Bills Loaded With Pork" lists more than 160 of those earmarks, such as:

• $175,000 for the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy;
• $250,000 for the Montana World Trade Center;
• $500,000 to Renovate the Public Pool in Banning, California;
• $387,976 for Manure Management Research, Ames, Iowa;
• $75,000 for ArtsQuest-The Banana Factory, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; and
• $365,156 for Potato Breeding, Aberdeen, Idaho.

This paper can be found at: http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/wm1256.cfm.

2) Additionally, "Still Spending: Senate Set to Bust Budget Caps by $32 Billion" shows how Congress is using numerous gimmicks and abusing the emergency designation in order to bust the FY 2007 budget caps by at least $32 billion as follows:

• $16.0 billion: Defense (on top of the $50 billion emergency fund in the budget resolution) (already enacted)
• $1.8 billion: Border security (already enacted)
• $9.0 billion: Additional money shifted into domestic programs
• $4.0 billion: Another farm subsidy bailout
• $1.0 billion: NASA "emergencies"

Plus, more of the same has been promised for the Labor/HHS/Education bill.

This paper can be found at: http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/wm1222.cfm.

Will the last action by the departing Republicans be another spending spree?

Brian Riedl is Grover M. Hermann Fellow for Federal Budgetary Affairs at The Heritage Foundation