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How to Spend
Billions of Dollars Without Really Trying
by Jack Anderson
I'm not ashamed
to admit that as a young boy I swallowed great doses of patriotism
for which I still get periodic twinges. I was brought up to respect
the government and its processes, but I was also taught the primacy
of the spiritual over the temporal, and the importance of individual
effort. We, the people, by our own freedom of will were supposed
to place limits on the government.
Inbred in most
of us is a natural skepticism toward the claims of omnipotence politicians
are likely to make. Our Founding Fathers were so repulsed by the
notion of an omnipotent federal government that they devoted most
of their deliberations at the Constitutional Convention to the subject
of how to keep the president and congress out of our lives.
They settled
on the tenth amendment which mandates that any power not expressly
given to the federal government belongs either to the people or
to the states.
What in the
world happened? By degrees, we Americans got what we paid for-BIG
GOVERNMENT. The three words that guide any investigative reporter
are the same advice that The Washington Post's Bob Woodward
and Cal Bernstein got during the Watergate Investigation: "follow
the money." Those are words to live by for a reporter trying to
get to the root of most stories. When historians write the chronicles
of our times, they will find it was the money-the squandering of
it, the manipulation of it, the love of it-that brought us the very
money-weighted, top-heavy government that the Founding Fathers feared.
The budget procession
on Capitol Hill resembles a Japanese Kabuki dance. This is a traditional
Japanese drama which can best be described as an elaborate pretense.
The actors wear lavish wigs and makeup. They go through ostentatious
motions, singing and dancing with stylized poses and gestures. This
is precisely how members of Congress perform when they prepare the
federal budget.
Like the Kabuki
dance, this annual ritual has become an art form-an elaborate performance
that distorts reality. The Congressional performers hide behind
masks that present false faces to the public. There stylized statements
and ritualistic movements are all part of a great pretense. But
let me tell you what really goes on behind the scenes.
The president's
budget arrives on Capitol Hill laden with necessity and fantasy.
The problem is distinguishing one from the other. The budget hits
the halls of Congress in early February and is parceled out to the
House and Senate budget committees for hearings.
The important
thing to keep in mind is that the president's performance, his stomping
and loud singing mean absolutely nothing. He has no power to spend
your money. Only Congress can do that. The way Congress doles out
the money is so baffling that it discourages all but those that
stand to gain from participating in it from even trying to follow
the process.
Budget committees
in each chamber scribble numbers all over the president's budget
then send the hodge podge to the House and Senate chambers for passage.
Then they put their heads together to merge the House and Senate
versions. What comes out of all of this rigamarole is a "concurrent
budget resolution."
By this time
it will be mid-April and the budget will still mean next to nothing.
Congress has decided what it would like to spend money on; it has
put a limit on how much money it will spend. Incredibly, after all
this singing and prancing, Congress hasn't authorized spending any
money and the president never signs the resolution.
Yet already,
we tax payers have had to put up the money and are pelted with verbiage
through our representatives on Capitol Hill, taking credit for championing
vital projects to our community and slashing wasteful spending on
other communities.
In phase two,
the budget resolution is turned over to an array of Congressional
committees with authority over various agencies. These committees
then debate whether the money proposed in the budget resolution
should actually be spent. They write authorizing bills that the
House and Senate must pass and send to the president for his signature.
In phase three,
the House and Senate appropriations committee-and all their little
sub-committees-review each of the authorization bills and how much
of the money each of the lucky programs will actually receive. If
you're still reading this, it's now time to approach the appropriation
committees which have the real power in the process. Despite all
the dealing and dickering that has gone on before, these committees
can decide to leave approved programs high and dry without any money
and to fund programs that have never been authorized.
This conveniently
allows your Congressmen to take credit for approving a federal goodie
for you, while at the same time voting against funding for that
goody. He/she would like to be able to cite as evidence actual votes
that only insiders would recognize as votes for nothing. I would
call the end product zero-financing. The way it works is that the
budgeteers keep a locked file of zeros that they can pull out to
insert where they choose in this wonderland budget. They can borrow
these goose eggs from the future to pay for the present at the same
time, they declare that the books are balanced.
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© 2002 Meridian
Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
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