There They Go Again

"EMBARRASSINGLY LATE . . . grotesquely stuffed with pork . . . a grab bag of clandestine, largely ill-guided policymaking." That was what we wrote nearly a year ago, when Congress was preparing to pass last year's omnibus appropriations bill, the legislation that determines where the federal government's money is spent. Two years ago, describing the same annual bill, we described how it had become a "vehicle for enacting policy changes not approved, or even debated, by either house."

Sadly, this year's bill, passed by Congress last week, was no better, and on some counts it was worse. Not only was the $388 billion bill once again late and once again stuffed with pet projects, but this time it also contained what appears to be an egregious assault on taxpayer privacy: a provision slipped into the bill by staff that nobody much noticed until the votes had already been taken. The congressman in whose name the provision was requested, Rep. Ernest J. Istook Jr. (R-Okla.), swears he knew nothing about it. Because of the uproar from Democrats as well as their own party, House Republican leaders have agreed to summon their colleagues back next month to repeal the provision, thereby further delaying the whole process.

The truth, of course, is that this year's "mistake" was not a mere error but part of a growing pattern. Every year the process of passing the spending bills that allow the government to function becomes longer and sloppier. Since Congress fails to approve spending bills in any orderly fashion, a number of them are rolled into an "omnibus," which is passed so quickly that few members know what it contains. Some, including the designated new chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), are talking enigmatically about reform, but the trouble extends beyond spending bills. Last year's Medicare bill also was kept under wraps as long as possible, and it contained dozens of provisions with no relevance to Medicare. The energy bill, too, was kept secret as long as possible; fortunately in that case, a handful of senators found out what was in it and prevented it from being passed. Had the intelligence bill that was debated last week passed, it also would probably have swept through without actually being read by members. It seems that everyone has become jaded by the huge bills that pass through Congress with only rudimentary scrutiny.

Theoretically, it should be possible to defend the new bill, on the grounds that its budgetary increases are, on the whole, in line with inflation, which by the federal government's standards means they are modest indeed. But like the ostensible scrutiny given the bill, the ostensible modesty is a sham, given the high probability that the administration will return to Congress in a few months and ask for yet another supplementary spending package to support the U.S. military forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. It's also hard to praise the fiscal soundness of a bill that contains, aside from the egregious tax measure, the usual dubious pet projects of members across the country. To those who benefit, these may seem like worthy projects, but were all of them deserving of federal funding in an era of expanding military and homeland security budgets, skyrocketing health care costs, and the largest deficit in history? Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was right to call the appropriations process "broken."