Porker of the Month: September 2001 | Citizens Against Government Waste

Porker of the Month: September 2001

Press Release

In light of recent events in New York and Washington, Citizens Against Government Waste has decided not to name a Porker of the Month for September 2001.  We fully support the president and Congress's decision to expend a portion of the Social Security surplus — at least $20 billion of the $157 billion available this year — on supplemental payments for emergency efforts and enhanced military and intelligence capabilities.  Human lives and national security are the paramount concerns of our more than one million members and supporters.

That being said, we have four concerns.

First, it is worth noting that politicians in both parties were positioning to dip into Social Security funds before the current crisis occurred.  Thanks to “new” spending priorities, and Congress’s unwillingness ever, ever to cut unnecessary, redundant, or ineffectual programs, the government was already racing off the deficit cliff when terror struck.  President Bush had stood against this onrushing tide, being unwilling to take such funds except, appropriately, in case of war and recession.  Now, we have both.  But members of Congress always believe there’s a new “emergency," unlike the bona fide one like we saw this week — education, healthcare, the environment — which requires more spending on top of old.  There’s $74 billion above current budget levels for farm programs over the next ten years.  Education spending alone will go up by 11 percent next year.  Report after report by the General Accounting Office, agency inspectors general, and others inside and out of government have identified pervasive and unabated waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement that are simply ignored on Capitol Hill.  Strong nations with effective governments do not throw hundreds of billions of dollars away annually.

Second, we do support the government's use of Social Security funds for this current emergency, but we urge restraint beyond those needs.  Once the Social Security Rubicon is crossed and politicians see more than $100 billion in surplus available this year alone, CAGW fears a tidal wave of spending will swamp Washington.  This should be avoided for three reasons: A) Every dollar spent would otherwise go to paying off the national debt.  B) New programs, once in place, create permanent fiscal obligations, even when there's no budget surplus.  C) Pressure to address current government waste, fraud, and abuse, already at grotesque levels, disappears.  CAGW estimates $1.2 trillion in waste over the next five years, more than enough to win the war against terrorism.  It took fiscal conservatives more than 30 years to cleave Social Security dollars from general Treasury revenues after Lyndon Johnson united them.  Let's not totally abandon the principle of keeping them separate.

Third, the military is rife with wasted resources.  Its procurement process, force structure, and base arrangement all cry out for reform and modernization, and CAGW has enthusiastically supported Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's restructuring program.  Our fear now is all such efforts will be abandoned and billions of tax dollars will be poured into defense without careful thought and reform.  In that case, taxpayers will lose, along with our fighting men and women, and our national security.

Fourth, CAGW has identified $18.5 billion in pork-barrel spending in the fiscal 2001 budget.  While it’s too late, with only 17 days left in the fiscal year, to prevent this money from being squandered, it is not too soon to eliminate every morsel of pork stuffed into the pending fiscal 2002 appropriations bills.  Any member of Congress who attempts to use this crisis as an excuse for another pet project back home is undermining our efforts to defeat terrorism.  While the terrible events of this week are a wake-up call for America and the beginning of a new era, it should also be the end of the ages-old practice of pork-barrel spending.

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