Half Changed World

Most of the attention being paid to the huge omnibus spending bill that Congress is trying to pass this week has been focused on two provisions added at the last minute, one allowing health care providers and insurers to refuse to provide or pay for abortions and one that would grant Congress access to tax returns.

The outrage about these provisions is perfectly justified, but I’m bothered by the fact that the actual spending provisions of this huge appropriations bill are sliding by essentially unnoticed.

Take, for example, the first sentence in the conference report under the Department of Education (page 172): "The conference agreement includes $14,963,683,000 for Education for the Disadvantaged, instead of $15,515,735,000 as proposed by the House and $15,500,684,000 as proposed by the Senate."  Usually, conference committees split the difference between what the House and the Senate propose, but this is half a billion dollars less than what either of them had recommended for Title I, the main federal education program that provides funding for low-income students.  And this is before the proportional across-the-board cuts that will affect all programs.  The pattern is true across dozens of programs.

And no one seems to be noticing.  The newspapers aren’t covering it.  The NEA doesn’t have anything about it on its website.  I only know it because I was reading the article on Congressional Quarterly (expensive subscription required) for work.  The Committee report is available on Thomas if you’re up for reading several thousand pages of dense appropriations language.  But don’t feel bad if you’re not; the Senators and Representatives voting on it won’t have.

And this isn’t because Congress ran out of time.  The Senate didn’t even hold hearings on half of the appropriations bills that are wrapped up in this.  This is a deliberate strategy to make budget decisions quickly, out of the public eye, and with Senators and Representatives only given the chance to vote up or down on the entire package.  And if anyone protests, the projects for their districts are cut.

It’s a lousy way to run a government.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 22nd, 2004 at 10:16 pm and is filed under Current Affairs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.