Late Congressional Wins
by Bridgett Wagner

There is late big news on the FY2007 appropriations front: Senate fiscal conservatives have faced down members of the Appropriations committee who are responsible for all spending bills (and the vast bulk of the earmarks). Our understanding is that appropriations earmarks for FY2007 are over.

For those who have not been closely following the battle between Senate fiscal conservatives and Senate appropriators, several conservatives blocked appropriators from convening a conference committee on a military construction and veterans spending bill. The reason? Appropriators never gave any ironclad assurance that the veterans spending bill would not be hijacked for use as a pork-laden omnibus bill.

Senate conservatives reiterated their offer to GOP leadership. The deal was simple: The military construction and veterans spending bill would only be granted consent for a conference committee if ironclad assurances were given that the bill would come back from conference without any earmarks. While GOP leadership was certainly amenable to the deal, it was rejected outright by Senate appropriators, who refused to take any direction from upstart freshman Senators. The result of their inability to commit to a clean, earmark-free Veterans spending bill is that this particular bill will not receive further consideration by this Congress.

While the appropriators will lay their inability to pass this bill at the feet of fiscal conservatives, it does appear that the insatiable earmark appetite of appropriators doomed this spending bill. Appropriators will undoubtedly try to assert that conservatives don’t care about the needs of veterans, but the appropriators have made clear that they care more about earmarks than about funding veterans programs or military construction projects. The appropriators’ rejection of the good faith offer of a clean Veterans spending bill seems to validate the worries that the bill would instead be turned into a massive, pork-filled omnibus spending bill.

The practical result of all of this is that no more pork-stuffed appropriations bills will be signed into law this year, and a continuing resolution (CR) will instead be used to fund the federal government through the beginning of next year. It is expected that this continuing resolution, with very few exceptions, will provide funding at the lowest of three possible levels: the Senate-passed level, the House-passed level, or the level provided during the last fiscal year. This is a huge victory for fiscal conservatives and earmark opponents. Sen. Jim DeMint, in particular, deserves great praise for standing up for the American taxpayer.

Roll Call (subscription only) summed up this battle between earmark opponents and appropriators: http://www.rollcall.com/issues/52_55/news/16223-1.html. The piece concludes:… ”conservatives hailed the decision to pass only a CR until February by noting how many earmarks they prevented from becoming law. Meanwhile, “ Senate conservatives have effectively blocked over 10,000 earmarks and are ready to work with Democrats (or hold them accountable when necessary) to continue this progress next year,” DeMint spokesman Wesley Denton wrote in an e-mail. Denton added that Congress passed 12,852 earmarks in the fiscal 2006 spending bills and that by preventing “an earmark-laden omnibus bill, Senate conservatives have effectively cut the number by 80 percent, down to 2,600 earmarks, according to Citizens Against Government Waste.”

In addition, in a 57-37 vote, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg was successful in upholding a Budget Act Point of Order against a $4.8 billion agriculture disaster amendment to the FY2007 Agriculture Appropriations bill. “I am pleased,” he said “that my colleagues have joined me in standing up for fiscal responsibility. Emergency spending vehicles have become all too commonplace as a way to circumvent the traditional budget and appropriations process, a practice that must stop if we are to rein in the amount of debt we are passing on to our children and grandchildren. I hope that the incoming majority party will agree that tight spending controls are the key to keeping our economy moving in the right direction.”

So, in short, it appears as though the FY2007 earmark favor factory is closed. Earmark lobbyists will just have to look to Santa, not appropriators, for Christmas gifts this year.

Bridgett Wagner is Director of Coalitions Relations at The Heritage Foundation.