Should our tax dollars fund our troops fighting in Iraq, or the
Smithsonian's national worm collection?
If it's business as usual up at the Capitol, then this is the type
of question Congress will grapple with in the coming weeks. And if
history is our guide, the outcome is too close to call.
On March 25, President Bush unveiled a $75 billion proposal to
provide immediate funding for the war in Iraq. Of that amount, $63
billion would be to fight the war, $8 billion would be targeted to
foreign assistance and humanitarian aid, and $4 billion would
strengthen homeland security. The lives of the men and women in our
armed forces depend on Congress providing these funds
immediately.
It remains to be seen if Congress will act quickly and responsibly.
On March 21 of last year, President Bush proposed $27 billion in
immediate aid to prosecute the global war on terrorism, upgrade
homeland security and rebuild downtown Manhattan. It was not until
July 24 -- four months after receiving the proposal -- that
Congress finally sent the legislation back to the president's desk
to be signed into law.
And what caused the delay? The Senate was busy adding billions in
pork-barrel spending. As al Qaeda quickly regrouped, the
institution that bills itself as "the world's greatest deliberative
body" made sure that no defense or homeland security funds would be
released unless they also included: $2 million for the
Smithsonian's national worm collection, $1 million for student
housing in Baltimore, $2.5 million for coral reef mapping in
Hawaii, and additional funds for everything from honeybee research
to a Dog Dealers Task Force.
By the time the Senate was done, the president's $27 billion
proposal had ballooned to $31 billion. Senators did offset some of
this new spending with reductions elsewhere: They refused to fund
the president's $10 million plan to put a foreign terrorist
tracking task force in the FBI. Apparently, the FBI was no match
for honeybee research on the Senate's priority list.
It was not just a few senators who held national security funding
hostage last year. Their spending plan passed the Appropriations
Committee by a vote of 31 to 0, and the full Senate 71 to 26.
Eventually, the Senate relented and offset some of the new spending
with reductions in programs such as housing for the poor. President
Bush wisely exercised his option to not release some of the more
egregious expenditures.
Will Congress again hold national security hostage? There will
certainly be pressure to act quickly to guarantee the safety of our
troops, but Congress may respond by adding the same pork projects
at a faster rate. At this very moment, well-connected lobbyists and
influential constituents are surely delivering their wish lists to
members of Congress.
Congress should pledge that any new funding added to the
president's $75 billion request be used solely for assisting our
men and women in combat. Every dollar spent on an irrelevant pork
project represents one dollar that could be better spent keeping
our troops safe.
Instead of once again adding $3 million for cattle-genome
sequencing, Congress could use that money to purchase 1,000
additional night-vision goggles for our troops. Rather than adding
$700,000 for a biomass project in Winona, Mississippi, lawmakers
could buy 2,000 more gas masks to protect our military from
chemical and biological attacks. Instead of adding $21 million more
for ocean mapping, Congress could equip our military pilots with
1,000 more satellite-guided bombs that can target elite Iraqi
military divisions.
Unless, of course, Congress thinks that money would be better spent
on pork.
Brian M.
Riedl is the Grover M. Hermann fellow in federal budgetary
issues at The Heritage Foundation (www.heritage.org), a
Washington-based public policy research institute.
Distributed nationally on the Knight-Ridder Tribune wire