CAGW Slams Senate For Breaking Spending Limits | Citizens Against Government Waste

CAGW Slams Senate For Breaking Spending Limits

Press Release

For Immediate ReleaseContact: Tom Finnigan / Jessica Shoemaker
July 19, 2005(202) 467-5309 / (202) 467-5318

 

(Washington, D.C.) – Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today denounced the Senate Appropriations Committee for using budget gimmicks to exceed the spending cap set by its own budget resolution by nearly $12 billion.  In April, Congress agreed to cut domestic discretionary spending by one percent in its non-binding budget resolution for fiscal year 2006.  Instead, Senate appropriators have increased spending for such programs by about 2 percent.    

“The Senate is once again smashing all barriers of fiscal restraint,” CAGW President Tom Schatz said.  “It seems every program is a ‘national priority’ no matter how wasteful, ineffective, or duplicative it might be.”

On Thursday, July 14, the Senate Appropriations Committee unanimously approved the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act (H.R. 3010) at a cost of $145.7 billion – $3.8 billion more than requested by President Bush and $3.2 billion more than the version passed by the House.  The Senate version uses budget gimmicks to account for the higher total cost, such as delaying $3.3 billion in benefit payments past the fiscal year. 

The President’s fiscal 2006 budget called for cutting or eliminating 150 programs, saving $20 billion next year.  But Senate appropriators responded by adding programs back into the budget that were targeted by the President for termination, including $306 million for GEARUP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs), $41 million for the Byrd Honors Scholarship Program, and $23 million for the National Writing Project.  The House Appropriations Committee has recommended that 98 programs be terminated, saving more than $4.3 billion. 

The Congressional Budget Office recently lowered its deficit forecast for fiscal 2006 to $333 billion.  However, that figure does not take into account the $173 billion Congress plans to borrow from Social Security and other trust funds this year. 

“We are living in the calm before the storm of baby boomer retirement.  Lawmakers should be getting in shape for the difficult times ahead, not gorging themselves on pork fat.  It is no wonder taxpayers are fed up with Congress’s failure to get serious about cutting wasteful spending,” Schatz said.

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, mismanagement and abuse in government.

 

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