Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Forget what we did yesterday and listen to us today!

Monday I was assigned two appropriation bills and told to be ready to advise my boss on them. The House will pass 12 appropriations bills this year - each worth billions of dollars. This might sound like a lot but the vast majority of the money that the federal government manages is already locked-up as interest that needs to be paid on the debt or entitlement programs that need to be funded. The rest of the money is discretionary spending that is found in these appropriations bills. Within these bills is the juicy 'pork' that we often hear about. It is this pork, or earmarks as they're more appropriately known, that demonstrates a member's political might. Political might of course means the ability to bring money back to a member's district.

The process and rules of determining how a member will get the ever-diminishing portion of discretionary spending back to their district is what I have been listening to all day. It is the rules that are currently being debated and criticized that will determine how a member will get earmarks back to the district. As a stated goal of the new democratic majority is to eliminate earmarks, there seems to be a collective 'oh shit!' reaction by members as they squirm to navigate the new, more difficult path to bring the bucks home. What is more remarkable to me, however, are two larger themes.

The first is the general level of hypocrasy by the minority. 'Openness', 'transparency' and 'what the American people want' are being used especially liberally today. The Democrats have stated as one of their primary objectives the elimination of earmarks. This would mean that pork money would probably be switched to formula or competitive grants. This would mean the end to an era of hooking folks in your district up with grants and contracts. I am a bit conflicted by this idea because perhaps a benefit of being elected should be to have the trust and ability to bring money back home to your district. Maybe a benefit of seniority should be to have the ability to bring more money back to your district. With the elimination of earmarks money would be put into programs that constituents would have to compete and apply for rather than lobby their representative to receive. Furthermore, these programs, that would be administered by a department or agency, would add further oversite, rules, regulations, red-tape and bureaucracy.

There are positives, of course. The cronyism and 'hook-ups' would probably diminish. It is in this very general context - the positives and negatives - that the real, unspoken conversation over the past couple of days has occured. I am not the strongest in my procedural understanding of the tactics and consequences of this whole back-room conversation, and that technocratic minutia is not how this discussion is being framed. Publicly tt is for openness and transparancy and for the interest of the good, hard-working American people - barf.

It is also interesting to listen to the minority speak as vestal virgins guarding the flame of democratic virtue. The performance they are producing is one of total 'shock and awe' - they breathlessly ask how the democrats could consider exercising the power they won in the last election. They act as if they didn't have secret committee meetings the last congress and close the door on those who weren't part of the 'coalition of the willing'. I guess hypocrisy only means something if people actually REMEMBER examples of double-standards. And, in this age of Paris in jail or another road-side-bomb, do people actually remember what happened a year ago??

The other aspect of this whole debate that is interesting is how this debate is a reflection of the dismal fiscal reality of the federal government. Obviousley hypocrisy is an element in this observation as it is fascinating to hear Republicans lecture the Democrats how to be responsible financial stewards of the people's money. The larger issue, however, is that the consequences of misdirected priorities are finally starting to catch-up with us.

Last year, during my previous life as different cog in differnt cube in differnt federal agency, I had a great colleauge who really took the time to bring some persepective to what we were doing as federal employees. He said; 'Yeah, a lot of people hate the government and that they have to pay taxes but just take away some of these programs and see what people will say then.' It took me awhile to understand what he meant, but I've come to understand that only the government can perform certain social functions. If we got rid of the assistance programs that my colleauge and I were administering for postsecondary education institutions who would fill that gap? What if things get so tight because of tax cuts, the war, and Homeland Security spending that all those programs that people currently take for granted, yet don't really notice, don't get funded?

Stagnation and social strife come when priorities get out-of-whack. We didn't make the Soviet Union collapse - it collapsed from the inside-out because of misdirected priorities (Afghanistan, the command-economy, military spending, nepotism, etc). The fiscal situation we are presented with runs the same risk as being a similar cancer that could metastasize across the country. Should we cut education spending to build a border fence? Should we decrease highway funding to enhance Homeland Securies ability to gather 'intelligence'? Should an emphasis on security and defense outweight assistance and regulation? How the government spends its money, and perhaps how much money it has to spend, is a clear reflection of national priorities.

That is it for now. I'm going to go back to C-SPAN now and envy members' ties.