In an effort to eliminate unnecessary Washington spending in the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Bill (THUD), House Minority Leader Boehner (R-OH) plans to offer several amendments that would cut millions of dollars in spending from the THUD appropriations bill. CFA applauds Boehner’s leadership in reducing wasteful government spending. Says Boehner:

“Given the state of the deficit and debit, it’s time for Congress to start evaluating each government program in terms of whether it is worth forcing our children and grandchildren to pay for it.”

The Boehner amendments bring to light the wasteful spending that Congress continues to push.  This is the kind of scrutiny we have been calling on Congress to enact and, if applied in broad strokes, could represent significant savings for taxpayers. 
The Boehner amendments would:

• Terminate a HUD program for doctoral dissertations by cutting $300,000 from HUD and prohibiting the activity, since funds to study the work taxpayers are already paying thousands of people to do fall outside the scope of HUD’s mission.
• Cut $1.6 million from DOT’s Office of the Secretary, Salaries, and Expenses. This would expand the budgets and increase hires for the bureaucrats who oversee the DOT, even though each agency within the department already has their own budget offices that do just this.
• Cut $40 million from HUD’s Transformation Initiative that funds efforts to teach communities that receive HUD funds how to use them. Spending money to teach other people how to spend money. Really?
• Cut $35 million in new spending for grants to rehab houses through the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation. This is a redundant program, one even the Obama administration has decided to not continue to fund. Why should Congress continue to funnel funds down a duplicative black hole?

These are all commonsense approaches to decreasing the federal spending burden. After all, it’s hard to see why a government agency should be spending $40 million to teach people how to spend other money the agency is giving them. This is not the first time Boehner has tried to raise the visibility on wasteful spending.  He joined House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) earlier this year in writing a letter to President Obama recommending specific cuts to THUD. The amendment he has offered today, along with several other rescission proposals by other Republican members, represent tangible steps to cutting down on wasteful spending. We continue to support Rep. Boehner’s leadership on this issue, and look forward to more spending cuts as the House confronts the remaining 11 appropriations bills later this year.

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Today, CFA urged the House of Representatives to adopt an amendment offered by Rep. Jordan that would return the THUD Appropriations bill to its FY2008 funding levels. FY2008 marks a pre-bailout, pre-"stimulus" period, to which federal outlays should returned to keep taxpayers from paying for the poorly-conceived spending policies in perpetuity. From our alert:

While the Center for Fiscal Accountability remains staunchly opposed to the underlying bill, we support Rep. Jordan’s Amendment #7, which would return THUD funding to FY 2008 levels.

On the heels of failed “stimulus” and bailout plans, federal spending has grown at an unprecedented rate. Since the Obama administration took office, non-defense, non-discretionary spending has grown by 84 percent. This is clearly an unsustainable leap in government growth.

Click here to read the alert in its entirety.

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As the House debates the THUD Appropriations Bill and we continue to highlight the egregious earmark abuse of the appropriations process, there is some good news on the pork-barrel spending front. Yesterday, Senator Coburn's Earmark Transparency Act passed out of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee with bipartisan support. The bill, of which we have been suppportive, would put all earmarks online in a comprehensive database and would require members to attach their names and the spending amounts to their requests. This would be a great tool for taxpayers to track the Kings of Pork in Congress, so we are excited the bill is moving along!

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Today, CFA warned House members that we may rate a vote for H.R. 5850. The Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) Appropriations Act is chock full of earmarks and will place a huge burden on taxpayers.  CFA strongly opposes the spending in this appropriations bill and urges the House to vote no. The THUD bill is a favorite pet project of many members, as transportation and housing initiatives offer a wealth of opportunities to sneak pork back to their districts – many Republican members of Congress have offered amendments that would strip some of these wasteful spending projects. However, even if all of the earmarks were stripped out, this bill would still waste billions of taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars:

• The bill totals $67.4 billion in spending, expanding appropriations made in 2008 by over 38 percent.  This does not take into account the $13.61 billion already allocated to HUD under the “stimulus” bill.
• The bill contains 461 earmarks worth $328.4 million.  Notably, 355 of these earmarks are Democrat-sponsored.
• The House bill includes $45.2 billion for highway construction, $3.9 billion above President Obama’s request and $4.1 bill above these allocations in 2009.
• Amtrak will continue to receive generous government subsidies in this bill, with allocations totaling $1.77 billion.  These funds are on top of the $1.3 billion doled out in the “stimulus” grants while Amtrak continues to operate in the red.

Click here to see the entire alert.

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During the appropriations process, CFA keeps a watchful eye on the pork barreling that inevitably leaches into the process. As in past years, we have had a few champions of accountability emerge, challenging the earmarking process. Yesterday, Rep. Flake called attention to the $230 million in earmarks in the Military Construction Appropriations bill, and today he has filed a dozen amendments to strike earmarks from the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) Appropriations bill.

In the wake of a self-imposed Republican moratorium on earmarks, almost all (save six) of the 461 earmarks in the bill are Democrat-sponsored. Thus, leadership, not keen on seeing their pork projects cut, has drastically dialed back the amendments they are allowing to be ruled in order – on top of the earmark rescissions offered by Rep. Flake, Rep. Campbell filed nine pork-cutting measures and Rep. Hensarling filed eight. Both Campbell and Hensarling were denied all of their amendments, and Flake is being allowed to offer four. In contrast, last year nine of the sixteen earmark amendments offered were allowed to be introduced.

We warned of an increasing trend in these type of antics on the hill when leadership started debating appropriations bills under a closed rule last year – they are traditionally debated under open rules, meaning amendments can be offered at any time. As midterms loom, Democrats are hesitant to shine more light on their profligacy, and are instead manipulating the rules of the House to keep their earmarks safe. This, of course, from the most honest, open and ethical Congress in  history.

We applaud the efforts of Reps. Flake, Campbell and Hensarling and look forward to supporting further initiatives by these advocates to reel in pork-barrel politics.

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