"A Billion Here; A Billion There" - OpEd

The late great Republican senator from Illinois, Everett Dirksen, had a droll sense of humor and wit to match. Once, when pressed by a reporter about the budget process in the U.S. Congress he replied, well …"A billion here; a billion there and soon you are talking about real money.” Such pearls pass into Washington legend and become today’s clichés.

Regrettably the wisdom underlying his wit has not fared well in the intervening years. Any monetary sanity we could have laid claim to has gone the way of the Congressional earmark. Instead of billions we are now talking about trillions, and the odd billion of Dirksen’s day gets lost in rounding.

We become insensitive to the truth that even today those odd billions do mount into “real money” Although a billion saved is only a little over $3.00 of additional debt for each of our almost 300 million citizens, it’s time we stopped the insanity. We have gotten into our 8 trillion dollar debt a dollar at a time. We need to start paying it back the same way. The cavalier treatment of our taxpayers which disrespects the sacrifice it took to earn each dollar and layers pork on pork is at the root of what needs attention if we are to restore responsible governance to our great country. Cutting the Pork is where we must start.

When the President submitted his most recent budget, the military was still totaling up requests for the needs of our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Once calculated they were bundled into a supplemental appropriation request along with additional amounts aimed at post Katrina assistance for the Gulf States and approved by The Office of Management and Budget before being forwarded to the Hill for action. The amount requested, 92.2 Billion dollars, was acted on quickly by The House at the requested amount, but The Senate added additional programs, some only loosely germane to the requested purpose, for $14 Billion more. Now that may only be an additional $43 per citizen, but the appropriation itself is an additional $280 per citizen to start with and is probably not a model of budgetary restraint. They seldom are in wartime.

No one wishes to deny our troops the very best equipment and logistical support they need, or to deny meaningful focused assistance to the gulf region for infrastructure replacement caused by Katrina, but the legislation should not be a Christmas tree for every “worthy” project that has failed to make it into the normal budget process.

One particular project strongly advocated by Gulf States senators would spend 700 million dollars to relocate a rail line that has already been repaired by the company which owns it. There is no doubt the project which would permit the creation of a new boulevard on which to locate what will now be land based casinos would add to the attractiveness and convenience of the rebuilt casinos, but that is no reason to use the accelerated process for supplementals and the heightened urgency for a defense related measure to attempt to slip through a measure that couldn’t make it through the ordinary budgetary process.

While I have real doubts that this project should receive federal funding at all, I shouldn’t pick on this one project. It is only symbolic of hundreds of others that our legislators try to affix to crucial legislation every year. They are just doing their job the way it has been done for the past two centuries. Isn’t it what their constituents sent them to Washington for? To bring home the bacon? The more successful they are, the happier their electorate and the less likely anyone can run successfully against them.

I will tell you what is wrong with it. It is the magnitude of the huge sums of money now being directed by the federal government. We are dealing with more than a two trillion dollar budget. The sums are so huge; they breed greed, dishonesty and destroy our trust in government. It also is a serious blow to federalism. The amounts of money and the strings that come with it from Washington are overwhelming our regional diversity.

In an earlier column, I suggested the federal government be limited in what it can spend annually as a percent of GDP. There is nothing that has happened in the last year to change my mind. A 60% super majority in both Houses in Congress to exceed 15% of GDP should be required, and each measure that is thus proposed should require the same majority to be enacted. Coupled with this, the federal government needs to be held accountable for expenses it requires the states to pay for federally required programs. These so called “federal mandates”, swamp the ability of the states to determine their own priorities. In combination, federal mandates and the huge federal money machine are destroying our federal system and making the states vassals of federal hegemony.

This is a vast land. We do have our regional differences and what fits one state in the way its people interact with government for local services does not fit another. The wisdom of the federal system is that it allows the best to rise to the top, to be modeled by one state for the others. It allows problems to be solved closer to home, and it allows our lives to be sufficiently diverse that we aren’t smothered in a blanket of federal requirements for everything from what the guardrails on our highways look like to what our standards of intoxication may be.

Using the lure of federal money, the states and localities have become dependent on that federal money. Once dependent we become subject to all sorts of smothering regulations. It would be far better to limit the money going to and from Washington. The states need to decide for themselves what services are appropriate and to pay for it with local taxes and fees in a way acceptable to its citizens out of the funds no longer sent to Washington. Have a problem that is regional? Solve it with a regional multistate compact, but let’s stop subjecting ourselves to stifling federal control. We will all be better off and our liberties more secure.

We are a sensible people, but there is another problem preventing our finding a solution to the forces of disunity that prevent progress in implementing solutions on which there would otherwise be a consensus. We are a competitive society. There is a compulsion to compete. There is also a fascination with the sensational, and there is an emphasis on material reward. The Media have decided that it serves its financial interest to glorify our differences, to milk disputes no matter how inconsequential, to stretch them out, to personalize and to accent the seamy rather than the honest efforts to come together. Politicians picking up on this, knowing they need the campaign funds that come with a polarized electorate further add to the forces of division, and it has become a vicious circle making politics the newest blood sport. My friends we are better than this. We have to look for ways to reward agreement not dissension; to come together rather than to divide. This is worth a full column at a later date; meantime, if you will send me your ideas on how to achieve budget sanity, I will be glad to include them.

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Robert E. Freer, Jr, President of the Free Enterprise Foundation, is a Visiting Professor and the John S. Grinalds Leader in Residence at The Citadel. He is a regular contributor to the Mercury and can be reached at Robert.freer@citadel.edu

Charleston Mercury June 14, 2006. Page 16.