A CURIOUS thing happens to spending bills in the US Senate – they get larger, quite a bit larger.
Take President George Bush's war funding bill, currently under debate. Already the president's request totals some $183.8 billion, a meaty enough sum for a country with a considerable deficit and feeling the cold economic winds blowing around t
he globe.
But few other spending bills are likely to come before the Senate this year, and that means, according to one commentator "Senators are acting as if the war funding bill is the last train leaving the station."
So far that train looks like costing an additional $10 billion and counting. In a "war funding bill" the Senate wants such big ticket measures included as work permits for immigrant farm labour, heating subsidies for the poor, funds for coastal restoration in Mississippi and grants to local law enforcement to fight drug trafficking along the border with Mexico.
Add to that $50 million to track down child predators, $400 million to help rural schools and $350 million to fight wildfires in the west, and you might wonder why it's called a war funding bill.
Treatment of such bills as a spending free-for-all is a trend that many in Washington claim they wish to fight. Last month the White House budget director Jim Nussle berated senators for a "sky-is-the-limit mindset" regarding "the desire of some in Congress to load up this bill with tens of billions in additional spending".
Take as an example Republican Christopher Bond of Missouri, who has moved to keep open three "veterans' business resource centres" costing $600,000. One of the centres, naturally, is in St Louis, a major city in Bond's state. Such state projects are known as earmarks.
The year-end budget passed in December 2007 contained nearly 10,000 earmarks worth $10.4 billion, according to a database compiled by Taxpayers for Common Sense.
In addition, the Department of Defence Appropriations Bill, earlier in the year, contained nearly 2,200 earmarks worth $7.9 billion.
Mr Bush may well use his veto on the current bill if the Senate keeps adding expenditure, but it will take more than that to change the pork-barrel nature of Capitol Hill.
The full article contains 377 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
