It took five months for the $1.5 trillion federal appropriations bill to surface after the United States’ fiscal year began on Oct. 1, 2021, but only hours for the U.S. House—and less than a day for the U.S. Senate—to adopt it on March 9 and 10.
The massive omnibus package is a continuing resolution, not a budget, as Congress hasn’t adopted an annual budget since 2016. It includes a $46 billion increase or 6.7 percent boost for non-defense programs, a $42 billion, 5.6 percent increase in defense allocations, and $13.6 billion in supplemental appropriations to aid Ukraine.
“Do we have a representative republic if our representatives don’t know what they are voting on?” he said on March 21.
“Republicans cheered a 6 percent increase in defense spending. Democrats cheered a 7 percent increase in social services and executive administration spending,” Andrzejewski said, but one thing no one wanted to talk about was the 4,400 “earmarks” that take 367 pages “of pet projects” just to fully list.
Earmarks had been banned for a decade from the budget process until March 2021 when House Republicans, in a secret caucus vote, agreed with House Democrats to bring them back.
That makes this spending bill larded with earmarks unlike any budget appropriations package since President Barack Obama’s first term, and a costly trend for U.S. taxpayers, Andrzejewski said.
The bill “is a little more” than the typical excessive spending, he said.
“We got Republicans joining Democrats to drain the U.S. Treasury from the left and the right,” he said.
Andrzejewski called earmarks “the currency of corruption in Congress,” with virtually every member sluicing up to funnel money into their districts.
“It’s legal bribery to give away member pet projects for votes,” he said.
California lawmakers garnered $766 million in earmarks for projects and programs in their state.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) secured $166 million in earmarks for his state, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) filed 59 earmarks totaling nearly $80 million for his state.
Among earmarks of note are $1 million for a “farm-to-refrigerator training facility” in Pennsylvania; $2 million for George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change; $2.5 million for a museum in Vermont; $3 million for a fisherman’s coop facility in Guam; $995,000 for “Grid Resilience and Equity in the Energy Transition” research at the University of Massachusetts, with an emphasis on addressing racist inequality in the energy system; $500,000 for the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati; $496,000 in the name of “health equity” for “pool improvements” in one New York Democrat’s congressional district; and $500,000 for Worcester State University in Massachusetts to promote diversity and inclusion for STEM students to study climate change.
That’s the tip of the iceberg, Andrzejewski said, and it’s made worse by the bill’s swift adoption that came without Congress—never mind the public—having a chance to read through the bill, especially its 367 pages of earmarks.
“These are new laws that impact American families and businesses and sometimes even authorize billions or trillions in tax dollar spending. Scary, right? It’s ridiculous Washington dysfunction, and it has to end.”
Scott’s resolution, which has four Republican co-sponsors, has been idling unheard in the Senate Rules and Administration Committee since it was introduced.
The petition, posted March 19, had been signed by 15,000 people by March 21, Andrzejewski said.
“It’s mostly just regular people with common sense who want this simple reform put into legislation.”
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