Despite a campaign promise to allow Congress and the public three days to read a bill, Republican House leadership appears ready to vote Thursday on a 1,600-page omnibus spending package that was only announced on Tuesday. The $1.1 trillion package was negotiated with Senate Democrats and is expected to pass both chambers of Congress.
Wasteful government spending is likely included in any bill negotiated behind closed doors and posted soon before a vote. This list is not remotely exhaustive, but here are five examples of how the bill wastes your money.
1. Trade Adjustment Assistance
Unions stand to gain from the extension of the Trade Adjustment Assistance for Workers program. The program is meant to help workers that lose their jobs because of free trade agreements. “We give them, basically, super deluxe unemployment benefits,” James Sherk, a labor economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told the Washington Examiner. Extension of the program is a handout to unions, who can use the program as leverage in labor negotiations, since workers can collect plush benefits if management decides to close a factory. Trade Adjustment Assistance for Workers had been set to expire at the end of this year, but the omnibus package would extend the program through 2015.
2. Community Development Block Grants
Technically, the Community Development Block Grant program is getting cut by $30 million, but it is still receiving $200 million more than the Department of Housing and Urban Development requested. The program is supposed to fund, “a wide range of unique community development needs,” according to HUD. But HUD’s definition of community development needs is far too wide. In the 2014 edition of his annual “Wastebook,” Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., pointed out multiple instances of Community Development Block Grants being used for ridiculous purposes. Boutique hotels, ice houses and water parks all received taxpayer dollars through the program. By giving the program more funding than HUD requested, Congress is implicitly tolerating the wasteful grants the program gives out. The program will receive $3 billion in the spending package.
3. Rail and Bus Rapid Transit
The omnibus spending package includes $177 million in new funding for rail and bus rapid transit. Not every taxpayer will benefit from the funding, however. “California, Maryland, North Carolina, Colorado, Florida, Texas and other states,” will receive funding, according to the Senate Committee on Appropriations summary of the omnibus bill. In total, transit capital investment grants will receive $2.12 billion in the spending package.
4. Federal Weather Forecasting
The bill dispenses $456 million extra for weather forecasting in 2015. There is enough demand for accurate weather forecasts to support a private market, so the government should start removing itself from the weather industry. Various weather programs will receive $11.7 billion in the spending package.
5. National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation funds some necessary research, but its grants also get wasted on projects such as mountain lions running on treadmills, gambling monkeys, and synchronized-swimming sea monkeys. Congress should punish such useless wastes of taxpayer dollars. Instead, the National Science Foundation is receiving $172 million more in the omnibus spending package to provide 350 more grants. As with the weather industry, the government should start getting less involved in science, not more. The NSF will receive $7.3 billion in the spending package.
Unfortunately, this is just the tip of the iceberg that is wasteful federal spending. Funds are wasted across government, from the Department of Defense to the National Endowment for the Arts.
“It’s unfortunate that government has been funding pork projects and special interest funding for so long, that it’s just become part of the process for, unfortunately, too many people,” said Romina Boccia, who analyzes budgetary affairs at the Heritage Foundation, to the Examiner. As long as omnibus spending bills keep getting released to the public two days before voting, there won’t be enough time to shine a light on the wasteful projects that should be excluded from the federal payroll.
