Rescuing endangered House members

       Washington popularized the word "spin" decades ago to account for the way political consultants tilted or shaped campaign talk. Here comes another: "Air Drop."

        An "air drop" is a semi-secret appropriation to help members of the Democratic majority whose re-election in 2008 is menaced. In warfare, airdrops supply troops trapped behind enemy lines.

        Washington's airdrops help political soldiers who need to show influential supporters they can bring home the bacon.

        In the first session of Congress under Democratic rule in 12 years, there were an estimated 300 special airdrop bills -- funding questionable projects with your money -- slipped into a massive budget bill passed as the House and Senate headed home for Christmas parties, junkets and campaign fund-raising.

      Members will return here after an absence of three winter weeks, some of them sporting deep suntans.

       The air drops were all included in a bill that is more than 3,500 pages long. Members of the House saw it for the first time less than 24 hours before they passed it. The Senate had about 36 hours to inspect the legislation.

      No single member of the House or Senate; no staffer knows for sure what is in it. The president, who will sign it, certainly does not know. It provides about $600 billion in spending for all federal departments.

        The legislation is a failure on a number of fronts. First, President Bush persuaded a handful of Republican senators to tie up spending initiatives he didn't like with threats of unlimited debate, called filibusters.

        On the other side were the top Democratic appropriators: the Senate's aging Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia who no longer has the stamina or sharpness to engage in long, drawn-out negotiations over spending; and House Appropriations Chairman David Obey of Wisconsin, an irascible liberal who couldn't face the fact that there is a still a Republcan in the White House threatening vetos.

        There are supposed to be 13 separate spending bills passed every year, not just one. They were supposed to be passed last summer for a federal fiscal year that started last Oct. 1.

         These special rescue, airdrop bills are a small, but growing share of bills known as "earmarks." Earmarks are pecial interest spending provisions that never see the light of day in a congressional hearing. Too often these earmarks went to friends of House members and senators who, in turn help raise campaign funds for incumbents. Quite often the beneficiaries of these earmarks hired pals and even relatives of House members and senators.

       The Democrats came to power last January promising "transparency" to the earmark, or airdrop, system. But of course there was no time to even know what all these earmarks were for when one must search through a 3,500-page bill in less than a day.

      No one agrees on the total number of earmarks in the bill, or exactly how many of them are "airdrops." Chairman Obey estimated there were 9,000 earmarks, including the 300 airdrops inserted quietly in the session's final days. Congress had already approved another 2,000 earmarks in November.   

        It will take months to find out who got what. But Taxpayers for Common Sense said the bill underwrote $20 billion in risky loans for the nuclear power industry, and $8 milion in loans for the coal companies, and $100 million for presidential security at next year's political conventions. That's right, $100 million.

         Amtrak got just enough money to keep pace with inflation, but nothing for developing high-speed corridors or create trackage for the riding public. It provides only a $1 billion to upgrade the nation's crumbling bridges and federal higheways.

        Thanks to leiglsation like this, discretionary spending in Washington is growing at a rate of 9 percent, or three times inflation. This does not include funding for Social Security, Medicaid or Medicare.

        Is Congress out of control, or what?

         --Douglas Turner

         

Comments

[Texan Longhorn]

Is this Headline an Oxymoron??? Why save them? question is...how much will it cost to save them versus how much damage will they cause us over their remaining term?