Senator’s Trick Is No Taxpayer’s Treat

(Washington, D.C.) — Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today named Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) its October Porker of the Month for stuffing the fiscal 2003 Emergency Supplemental portion of the fiscal 2004 Legislative Branch Appropriations Act with pork-barrel projects that benefit his home state.  President Bush submitted a request for $1.9 billion in emergency funding to help cover natural disasters, homeland security, and costs associated with the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.  Signed into law on Sep. 30, the supplemental stirred up a witch’s brew of $65 million for extraneous projects, including $1.4 million for three projects in Pennsylvania.

Where the President sees flood victims in need of relief, Sen. Specter sees another chance to serve federal treats to his constituents back home.  The supplemental contains $1 million for the Geisinger Health System to establish centers of excellence for the treatment of autism, $200,000 for the Pittsburgh Mercy Health System, and $200,000 for the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine for a minority outreach oral health initiative.

Sen. Specter took advantage of his position on the Senate Appropriations Committee to indulge in one final spending binge before the last full moon of the 2003 fiscal year and the opening of his reelection campaign in 2004.  While oral hygiene and treatment for autism are both laudable objectives, neither constitutes an unexpected emergency in need of immediate funding.  If these projects were truly significant, they should have been considered through the regular 2004 budget process.  Sen. Specter shortcut the rules, and in doing so aggravated the projected $480 billion deficit.     

Taxpayers should set a collective curse on Congress for not considering the President’s emergency spending requests for disaster relief as a separate bill to be debated and voted on its own merits.  By tacking it on to the Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill, it was easier for tricksters like Sen. Specter to hide pork-barrel projects, and harder for fiscally responsible members of Congress to object to the entire bill.  Moreover, appropriators knew that the President would not veto a bill that funded the legislative branch and emergency spending, despite the added pork.

Sen. Specter and his ghouls on the Senate Appropriations Committee can congratulate themselves for bringing home the bacon.  They can also take credit for the mounting national debt that will suck the blood out of future generations of taxpayers and the national economy.

For raiding the treasury in the closing weeks of a record-setting deficit year, CAGW names Sen. Arlen “Ghost” Specter its October Porker of the Month. 

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