(Washington, D.C.) Traditional ghosts and ghouls are scary enough on Halloween, but this year taxpayers should be especially fearful of congressional vampires, who are ready to draw a record amount of blood money from every American.  With a $374 billion federal deficit in fiscal 2003 and a projected $480 billion deficit in fiscal 2004, members of Congress and special interests are handing out the taxpayers’ candy to each other on Capitol Hill.  Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) provides this spooky Halloween list of who deserves a trick and who deserves a treat:
TRICK: To members of Congress for giving themselves a pay increase of $3,400, bringing their total salary to $158,103.  Over the past five years, representatives and senators have received $21,000 in pay raises, enough to buy candy bars for every resident of Emporia, Kan. or Newark, Del.  Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) pulled the best trick of all by denying the additional income was a pay raise at all, instead calling it a “cost-of-living adjustment.”

TREAT: To President Bush for his tireless efforts to pass a $350 billion tax cut, which took funds out of the hands of the big spenders, gave taxpayers more of their own money, and helped stimulate the economy.

TRICK: To Senator Stevens for promising to filibuster a resolution to reduce pork-barrel spending, if it reached the Senate floor.  As the top porker per capita in Congress, Sen. Stevens is staying true to form by promising to deny a vote on a reasonable budget reform measure designed to end abusive earmarks in appropriations bills.

TREAT: To Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for leading the effort in the Senate Armed Services Committee to reject the $21 billion Boeing tanker lease deal, which would cost $5.7 billion more than purchasing the tankers.

TRICK: To Rep. Terry Everett (R-Ala) for receiving $202,500 in the 2003 Omnibus Appropriations Act for the National Peanut Festival Fairgrounds in Dothan, Ala., prompting Citizen’s Against Government Waste to award him “The Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut Award.”  The 60th annual peanut festival begins, appropriately, on October 31, and has included a spam recipe contest, a Miss National Peanut Festival contest, and a Little Miss National Peanut Festival contest.  It’s not clear yet whether Rep. Everett will dress like a nut himself on Friday in the opening day parade.

TREAT: To the Postal Service Board of Governors for forcing the retirement of Karla W. Corcoran as Inspector General (IG) of the United States Postal Service.  Ms. Corcoran took a $117 million, 750-employee IG workforce and forced its top management to divert its energies away from ferreting out waste, fraud and mismanagement and into a "culture of values," including dressing up in costumes and staging mock trials.

TRICK: To the National Institutes of Health for funding a study being conducted at Northwestern University, which pays 180 lesbian, bisexual and heterosexual female students $75 each to view pornographic clips with a probe inserted into their genitalia to record sexual arousal.

TREAT: To House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle (R-Iowa) for requiring congressional committee chairs to identify waste, fraud, and abuse in mandatory spending within their jurisdiction in the fiscal 2004 Budget Resolution, leading to a list of $85 to $100 billion in savings over 10 years.

Citizens Against Government Waste is the nation's largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.