Fiscal restraint reborn
April 27, 2006 | By Nathaniel Ward
President Bush has vowed to veto pork-barrel spending, like the plan to spend $700 million to rip up these tracks and move them a few miles inland.
President Bush stood with fiscal conservatives Wednesday when he announced that he would veto the emergency spending bill if it cost more than the $92 billion he requested or included items irrelevant to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan or hurricane recovery.
“The President is to be commended for his strong leadership in enforcing fiscal discipline,” write Heritage’s Alison Fraser and Brian Riedl. “The White House Statement of Administration Policy draws a clear line in the sand by firmly pledging to veto the supplemental spending bill if non-avian flu funding exceeds $92.2 billion. Overall, this SAP receives an A- in fiscal responsibility.”
The President specifically objected to the $700 million earmark for a “railroad to nowhere” in Mississippi, a cockamamie scheme whereby the federal government would pay $700 million in taxpayer dollars to rip up a newly-repaired freight railway and move it a few miles inland. The White House statement (available online at Townhall.com) was right on target: “Relocating the tracks would represent a substantial investment beyond pre-disaster conditions and would improperly require U.S. taxpayers to pay for private sector infrastructure.”
Thirty-five Senators, including Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), immediately supported the President’s veto threat, saying in a letter to the White House (link in PDF) that they would back his veto should he use it. And a still larger group of 48 Senators attempted to strike the railroad earmark directly—but they were defeated by 49 big-spending stalwarts.
We’re nowhere close to where we want to be on spending, but we’re making progress.
They’re spending how much on what?
Every time you look at the emergency spending bill—intended to fund our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and to clean up after last year’s hurricanes—the more absurd earmarks you discover.
- Jackson, Mississippi’s Clarion-Ledger reports that one earmark would spend $80 million to restore a house owned by Confederate president Jefferson Davis—even though the repairs are estimated to cost only $25 million. Heritage spending expert Ron Utt visited the site two weeks ago and said even $25 million may be too much.
- The office of Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) reports finding earmarks including “$15 million for seafood promotion, funding for a drivers’ license facility in Macon, Georgia, and $500 million in corporate welfare for Northrup Grumman.” The Senator is also taking on 15 more dubious earmarks.
Fed up with spending? Tell people about it!
If you’re as frustrated with Congress’s free-spending ways as we are, and if you want the President to take a stand for fiscal responsibility as we do, we have to get the message out. Tell your friends exactly what sort of waste Congress is proposing and forward them this e-mail. And encourage them to sign up for MyHeritage.org e-mails so they get the facts on important issues like spending.
Many of you have responded to our challenge to forward MyHeritage.org e-mails to your friends and colleagues. But we must do more if we are to return fiscal responsibility to our nation’s capital.
- Forward this e-mail to your friends and family
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Conservative reform in Massachusetts
In an interview with MyHeritage.org, Bob Moffit, the director of Heritage’s Center for Health Policy Studies, said Gov. Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts health care reforms apply important conservative reforms to allow individual choice and ownership.
The plan creates “a single market where small business employees can easily pick and choose among different health insurance plans, buy those plans, own them, and take them from job to job,” said Moffit, one of the chief opponents of President Clinton’s 1993 health care reforms. “Employees, not employers, buy the health plans.”
Stuart Butler, director of Heritage’s domestic policy department, said in another interview with MyHeritage.org that Gov. Romney’s reforms “create the equivalent of what members of Congress and other federal employees have for their health care.” The heart of the reforms are consumer choice and ownership, Dr. Butler explained. “The plan is yours. It belongs to you, and you can take it from job to job.”
Moffit said that it was “a mistake” to include an individual mandate in the plan that does not allow individuals to self-insure if they choose. “That is not an ideal solution to a very real ‘free rider’ problem,” he said. In the original proposal, Moffit continued, “Governor Romney rightly emphasized the crucial point that people should take personal responsibility for their own health care. He had a better proposal” than what ultimately passed.
At the same time, Butler explained, “we think the portions of the legislation that cause some concern are overshadowed by the good parts, and they’re certainly not onerous enough to cause us to oppose the whole system.” Especially since these reforms were enacted in Massachusetts, where the legislature is five-to-one Democratic, some compromise is acceptable, especially if they result in strong conservative reforms.
Overall, the plan is “a critical move towards a consumer-based health care system,” Dr. Butler said.
In other news
- President Bush tapped conservative commentator Tony Snow to be his new press secretary yesterday.
- A Senate panel has determined that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is so dysfunctional that it should be disbanded.
- Pro-illegal immigration groups have called for a general strike on Monday, May 1 with the aim of shutting down major cities during protests in favor of amnesty for illegal aliens. “We’re going to close down Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Tucson, Phoenix, Fresno,” said one labor union organizer who’s leading the protests. May 1 is also a holiday celebrated by socialists, communists and anarchists as International Worker’s Day.
Coming up at Heritage
To attend these or any other Heritage Foundation events, RSVP at Heritage’s events website. Or you can watch these events live online at Heritage.org. All times are Eastern.
- On Friday, April 28 at 11:00am, Heritage’s Baker Spring and James Carafano join a panel of representatives of the Navy and Coast Guard to discuss essential modernization and upgrades to military equipment to avoid a “hollow force.”
- It’s not too late to sign up! On Monday, May 1 and Tuesday, May 2, The Heritage Foundation will host its twice-annual President’s Club meeting in Washington, DC. Speakers include House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), United Nations Ambassador John Bolton, television host John Stossel, columnist George Will, and Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) of the Republican Study Committee. The event is open to President’s Club members.
Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation.
