Time for the Porkers in Washington to go on a Diet

From Opinion Journal:
Cuts for Katrina
Internet activists and some GOP lawmakers seek to slash pork to pay for reconstruction.

Sunday, September 25, 2005 12:01 a.m.

Recently we suggested that cancellation of $25 billion in pork projects--euphemistically known as "earmarks"--in the recently passed Highway Bill would be a good first step to offset some of the cost of rebuilding the infrastructure in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast.

The idea of a pork-for-reconstruction swap had already been denounced as "moronic" by a spokesman for Don Young of Alaska, Chairman of the House Transportation Committee and proud father of the now-infamous $223 million "bridge to nowhere" near Ketchikan. Since then the White House and Congressional Republican leadership have been acting as if the cost of Katrina relief should have no impact on the course of an administration that has presided over the fastest growth in discretionary spending since Lyndon Johnson.

But thankfully, a grassroots Internet campaign and a handful of House GOP conservatives have refused to give up on the idea that spending cuts should be found to defray the estimated $200 billion federal price tag for hurricane relief. In the Senate, John McCain is proposing a similar pork-for-Katrina swap.

The Internet campaign picks up on the idea of revisiting the earmarks in the Highway Bill. A Web site called Porkbusters (www.truthlaidbear.com/porkbusters.php) helpfully lists these projects by state and directs readers to the appropriate Representatives and Senators to ask what they would cut. Around the country a flood of letters to local newspapers has echoed the theme.

And if revisiting the Highway Bill is too much to ask, how about a one-year moratorium on all non-defense earmarks for fiscal 2006? Rep. Ron Lewis (R., Kentucky) proposes just that in a "Dear Colleague" letter dated Monday. Other suggestions include across-the-board spending cuts at federal agencies of 2.5 cents on the dollar and delaying the introduction of the Medicare drug benefit by a year. Last week members of the House Republican Study Committee--led by consistent spending hawks such as Mike Pence, Jeb Hensarling and Jeff Flake--announced "Operation Offset" and a list of specific options to find savings in the budget.

White House flacks have been sending out emails claiming the new spending is mandated by a 1988 law called the Stafford Act. But the idea that somehow the government is on automatic pilot and that expenditures cannot be restrained by Congress or the President is irresponsible and even insidious. It is a basic principle of Constitutional law that no Congress can mandate expenditures by a future one. And while the Stafford Act does suggest that temporary infrastructure repair after major disasters is a federal responsibility, it does not justify why 41 states should receive Katrina aid and it certainly doesn't relieve Republicans of their fiscal duty to identify offsetting cuts.

The startling bottom line on Bush administration profligacy is this: At $22,000 per household, federal spending is at an inflation-adjusted post-World War II high and set to go still higher soon as the Baby Boomers start drawing Medicare and Social Security. Reforming those entitlements will be tough enough. And voters will have good reason not to want to entrust that task to a party that can't even admit the wastefulness of bridges to nowhere in the wake of the new century's worst hurricane.

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