(Washington, D.C.) – Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today named Rep. John Spratt (D-S.C.) Porker of the Month for working to thwart a budget reconciliation package that could save taxpayers $53.9 billion over five years.  As ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, Rep. Spratt preaches fiscal restraint yet refuses to offer savings proposals and even held a mock hearing to misconstrue miniscule spending reductions as deep cuts.  The House is scheduled to vote today on the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (H.R. 4241). 

The fiscal 2005 budget resolution (H. Con. Res. 95) instructed House authorizing committees to find $35 billion in savings over five years to slow the growth in mandatory spending, the first spending reconciliation to be considered by the House since 1997.  After hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the Gulf Coast, House leaders raised the savings target to $50 billion to help offset the cost of recovery.  But Rep. Spratt urged congressional leaders to cancel the reconciliation process altogether in the wake of Katrina.      

Rep. Spratt and his fellow Democrats have balked at many provisions in H.R. 4241, including trimming the growth in Medicaid and student loan payments.  Rep. Spratt says the burden will be born by “Single mothers seeking child support from deadbeat dads…Students struggling to pay loans for their college education, foster children, the sick and poor whose only access to health coverage is Medicaid, or whose nutrition depends on food stamps” (The State, 11/07/05).  Rep. Spratt’s mock hearing featured “witnesses” from social and agricultural special interest groups.   

In actuality, the proposed savings are not “cuts;” they merely slow the growth of mandatory spending from an average of 6.4 percent to 6.3 percent per year (one tenth of 1 percent), still twice as high as inflation.  Furthermore, the programs targeted are wasteful, inefficient, and plagued by fraud and abuse.  Medicaid spending has soared 85 percent since 1997 to $295 billion in 2004, with an accompanying explosion in fraud.  A year-long investigation by The New York Times found that the program misspends billions of dollars annually in that state alone.  The reconciliation bill will slow the program’s average annual rate of growth from 7.7 to 7.5 percent over 10 years and will prevent payments to illegal immigrants.  Other reforms will improve programs’ performance.  For example, the bill ends the guaranteed minimum 9.5 percent rate of return that lenders can receive on some student loans.  Earlier this year, a lender in New Mexico took advantage of this loophole to reap $36 million in excess subsidies, according to the Department of Education’s inspector general.  Furthermore, H.R. 4241 actually increases funding student loans by $4.2 billion above fiscal 2005 levels.

Mandatory spending currently accounts for 54 percent of the federal budget.  Left unchecked, it will absorb 62 percent in just 10 years and will eventually crowd out all other federal priorities.  Rep. Spratt prefers to bury his head in the sand and punt the problem to future generations to deal with.  He claims to favor across-the-board spending cuts as an alternative to the GOP plan.  But Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.) has proposed seven across-the-board cuts – of one percent each – to appropriations bills this year, and Rep. Spratt voted against every one.   

For ignoring the looming crisis in mandatory spending, for using scare tactics to portray modest spending restraints as deep cuts, and for refusing to cut wasteful spending to offset hurricane recovery and reduce the deficit, CAGW names Rep. John Spratt Porker of the Month for November 2005.

Citizens Against Government Waste is the nation’s largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.  Porker of the Month is a dubious honor given to lawmakers, government officials, and political candidates who have shown a blatant disregard for the interests of taxpayers.