Senate Appropriations Chairman Robert Byrd (D-W. Va.) is up to his old tricks.  Last week, in an attempt to muscle President Bush and his Budget Director, Mitch Daniels, over the defense supplemental spending bill, Byrd took to the Senate floor to chastise Daniels.  In a display impressive only for its sophistry and pomposity, Byrd lashed Daniels for daring to stand up to the Congressional Big Spenders Caucus, which Byrd bestrides like a colossus.  Citizens Against Government Waste names Byrd its Porker of the Month for July 2002.

"He [Daniels] is always meddling in the Congress, in its work, and in appropriations,” Byrd complained.  “Not only that, he's always lecturing the Congress…. The appropriations process is being mangled, it's being maimed, it’s being murdered at the hands of someone who is not elected by the people of this country.  What bar of judgment does he stand behind?  So I repeat again, upon what meat doth this, our little Caesar, feed?" Byrd concluded, referencing Shakespeare.

First, the spectacle of Robert Byrd criticizing anyone for being imperious is too absurd to bear further comment.

Second, what is his beef exactly?  Byrd knows full well this president — like every president — is going to set a budget and attempt to hold Congress’s 535 fiefdoms to the bottom line.  While Byrd may not like the White House suggesting specific spending cuts, maybe if he would behave like the statesmen he claims to be it would be less necessary.  Since Byrd handles tax dollars like a five-year-old with a bag of Halloween candy, President Bush has to set limits for him.  Hence, the senator’s temper tantrum.

Third, how dost this champion of pork, who has purloined over $1 billion in unauthorized appropriations earmarks for West Virginia in recent years, dare to criticize someone else for “mangling” the appropriations process?

Fourth, in his attempt to cut Daniels down, Byrd lapses from his normal ridiculous into a new wonderland.  When he questions what bar of judgment Daniels stands behind, has he forgotten that this “little Caesar” speaks for and serves at the pleasure of the President of the United States, who is the one leader who speaks for all the American people?  Maybe the senator, who represents only one-one hundredth of one-half of one-third of the federal government, yet acts the part of Caesar Augustus, should consider his relative position before he scolds the White House.

Of course, Byrd’s rhetoric is really just schoolyard bullying.  The fight over the defense supplemental is precursor to this fall’s fight over whose agenda will dominate the 13 federal appropriations bills, and Byrd is flexing on the White House.  He hopes to force Bush to cede authority on spending policy to Congress, i.e. to him, at which point he will — with Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle’s (D-S.D.) blessing — run deficits up and up to the next presidential election, at which point they will blame … the Bush tax cut.

For refusing to offer a serious, pork-free supplemental in this time of national emergency, and for being the real tyrant, CAGW awards Sen. Robert Byrd its Porker of the Month for July 2002. 

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in government.  For more information, see CAGW's web site at www.cagw.org.