Minibus Drives Savings

On November 18, 2011, President Obama signed the “minibus” appropriations legislation, which contained three fiscal year (FY) appropriations bills: the Department of Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies; Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies; and Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies. According to a November 17, 2011 press release by House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the legislation decreases spending in these appropriations bills by $7 billion from fiscal year (FY) 2011, and comes in at $98 billion below the president’s budget request.

The minibus eliminated 20 programs, saving taxpayers more than $450 million. One good example was the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC), whose mission has been called duplicative and vague since its inception. The NDIC was first funded in 1993, when the late Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) inserted an earmark into a defense authorization bill, and told DOJ to put it in his congressional district. A 1993 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report warned that “law enforcement officials … have questioned the NDIC’s management structure while some are unclear on its mission.” In 2005, a U.S. News & World Report article quoted Drug Enforcement Agency agent Jim Milford saying, “The bottom line was that we had to actually search for a mission.” In its 18 years of operation, the NDIC has been the subject of scandal surrounding employees’ frivolous travel expenses and has been under the knife for budget cuts several times, only to wriggle free through the use of earmarks. President George W. Bush recommended its termination in his budgets for FYs 2006, 2007, and 2008, while President Obama’s FY 2012 budget called for a $19 million reduction in funding for the NDIC.

Funding was also eliminated for the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Technology Innovation Program (TIP). Formerly known as the Advanced Technology Program, TIP’s mission was to support innovation in high-risk, high-reward projects that the private sector is unlikely to undertake on its own. TIP-subsidized firms attempted to “commercialize” completed research and create marketable products. Supporters of government-subsidized research and development often argue that private firms lack proper incentives to engage in long-term projects. However, TIP did more to reproduce existing private sector research and development than it did to address the private sector’s shortcomings. A 2005 GAO report found that 68 percent of TIP’s projects “addressed research goals that were similar to those already funded by the private sector.” To make matters worse, TIP has funded highly profitable firms like IBM, Motorola, and 3M. In other words, the TIP was corporate welfare dressed up as a way to alleviate “market failure.”

The budgets for several wasteful programs were reduced, including the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Created in 1965, the NEA and NEH exemplify how the government dabbles in fields that should be entirely free from intervention. Getting NEH and NEA on the chopping block has proven difficult because interest groups and their political allies have fought for every drop of funding. For example, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) helped defeat H.R. 1, the Full-Year CR for Fiscal Year 2011, which, among other spending reductions, defunded the NEH and the NEA. On March 8, 2011, Sen. Reid described the proposed termination in a Senate floor speech as “mean-spirited,” stating that were it not for the NEH’s federal money, the Cowboy Poetry Festival and “the tens of thousands of people who come there every year, would not exist.” This earned Sen. Reid Citizens Against Government Waste’s (CAGW) “Porker of the Month” in March 2011.

While CAGW would prefer that the NEA and NEH were completely eliminated, the decrease in funding levels contained in the minibus represents a step in the right direction. Taxpayers should be encouraged that other programs, such as the NDIC and TIP, were eliminated altogether. CAGW has been advocating for smaller government for years. Members of Congress may finally be paying attention, although more spending could have been cut from the minibus. Stiffer tests await in the nine appropriations bills that have yet to be passed, including the goliath Department of Defense appropriations bill.