They’re pros. They’re experts, They’re real experienced. Of course, they can’t get the job done. But other than that, they sure do know what they’re doing. It’s the job of passing a federal budget. Not that I’m a huge fan of the budget as such. I disagree with about 94 percent of the federal spending. You’d think I’d like budget delays, but I don’t. Because in the crazy world of Washington, delays in the budget like everything else in the end cost us more money.
The budget deadline for the 2004 fiscal year has now passed. So Congress is once again freezing operations at the previous year’s fiscal levels until it figures out spending for the next fiscal year. Congress has passed continuing budget resolutions to keep the spending going. The danger is that the new appropriations will be passed with an omnibus resolution that sandwiches all the spending into one big fat bill. That you’d need a crane to deliver to the White House.
Pete Sepp of the National Taxpayers Union points out that “Once you get into omnibus territory, it’s usually as urgent and rushed as the final two minutes of a football game.” So lawmakers will “approve anyone’s pet project just to get the bill to the president’s desk, and that can be very fiscally dangerous.” What this means, of course, is that there is actually an incentive for the career politician not to get things done so that he can later slip in all kinds of salty pork-barrel spending under the political radar screen. There oughta be a law.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.