The Senate quietly doubled its office decorating allowance and increased the amount of money taxpayers will pay for lawmakers’ funerals.  A whopping $500,000 could be spent by 100 Senators to purchase furniture or draperies “unique to their offices and/or home states,” or for custom upholstering of chairs and sofas.  Money allotted for a deceased Senator’s funeral increased from $2,000 to $5,000.  The Senate limited the amount that can be paid for miscellaneous expenses, such as the minister and musicians, to $2,500.    

-Roll Call (11/12)

Congress is on the verge of passing a record authorization bill to let the Pentagon spend more than $400 billion for the next year.  A protectionist provision requiring military contracts to go to American suppliers was dropped.

-NYTimes.com (11/12) 

The National Institute of Health is spending $150,000 to see how college students respond to pornography by measuring their sexual arousal response. 

-WSOCTV.COM

Federal discretionary spending expanded 12.5 percent in fiscal year 2003, capping a two-year spending binge that saw the government grow by more than 27 percent.  Although President Bush has asked Congress to cap discretionary spending at 4 percent, he has yet to veto a single spending bill.  

-WashingtonPost.com (11/12)

In the Irony Department, the 2004 VA/HUD Appropriations Bill increases public funding for the National Space Privatization Program in Missoula, Montana by $1.5 million. (emphasis added)

-www.thomas.loc.gov/

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) tried unsuccessfully to get the Senate to debate an amendment to the Department of Agriculture’s annual funding legislation that would set a new cap on farming subsidies.  The $360,000 cap set in 2002 is widely abused as farmers create legal entities with interests on the same land, each entitled to a payment.

-NYTimes.com (11/10)

Helene Shue, an 89-year-old Pennsylvania woman, was evicted from her home of more than 50 years for missing one tax payment of $572.  Philip Dobson of Middle Paxton bought the land at a tax sale and returned it to Ms. Shue. 

-The Patriot News (11/7)

Rep. Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.) has included $300 million in the House version of the federal budget for a renovation of a decaying lock at the Chickamauga Dam, to be carried out by the Corps of Engineers.  Citizens Against Government Waste calls these projects a giveaway to the barge industry.

-Associated Press (11/7)

A brand new $11 million mental health treatment facility in Mississippi has sat empty for 18 months.  The state has not come up with the $5 million per year required to operate the facility.  Construction also included a house on the facility’s grounds for Executive Director Dale Roberts, who collects $60,000 a year for doing basically nothing.

-Wilcox ABC 13 (11/7)

Rep. Ralph Regula (R-Ohio) recently announced plans to reject every earmark requested by Democrats in the final version of the 2004 Labor/HHS/Education Appropriations Bill.  Normally, partisan politics are pushed aside in the appropriations process and pork barrel projects are divided evenly between Republicans and Democrats.

-WashingtonPost.com (11/7) 

Rep. Karen McCarthy (D-Mo.) has hired high-profile attorney Stan Brand to help resolve an ethics dispute involving an unpaid $12,500 bill from a campaign consultant.  McCarthy hired the consultant following an incident where she injured herself after a night of drinking.  The House refused McCarthy’s request for tax dollars to pay the consultant.  The House ethics committee told her she could use campaign funds to pay for campaign-related tasks, but not for the work he did in her office.   

-Associated Press (11/6)

The $470 billion budget for the Labor, Education and Health departments contains $1 billion worth of earmarks.  Earmarks are unique spending items that bypass the usual budget process and go directly to the home districts of favored lawmakers.  The number of earmarks has grown 30-fold since Republicans took control of the House in 1994.

-NYTimes.com (11/6)

According to a recent poll, a majority of Americans cannot name a single department in the United States Cabinet.

-The Polling Company (11/4)

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington requested an expanded ethics probe of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) for his legislative assistance to Boeing on the grounds that the Senator’s wife, Catherine Anne Stevens, works for a law firm that represents the company. 

-Associated Press (10/31)

With overdue appropriations bills, a deepening crisis in Iraq, and a record budget deficit, the Senate Judiciary Committee turned its attention to college football.  Committee members debated the merits of the current ranking system in the Bowl Championship Series. 

-LincolnJournalStar.com (10/31)

The first helicopter pilot to see the patch of flames that would become the largest wildfire in California history radioed for aerial water drops, but state firefighters rejected the request because of night regulations.  His call came minutes after such flights had been grounded for the night.  Within hours, the flames grew out of control and killed 13 residents.  The fire is estimated to have caused $2 billion to $12 billion worth of damage.    

-Associated Press (10/30)

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) offered to accept Rep. John Warner’s (R-Va.) compromise on the Boeing lease deal if Warner would accept Hunter’s so-called Buy America provision, arguing that the U.S. must reduce its dependence on foreign manufacturers, especially during war time.  The 2004 defense authorization bill is also stalled over a provision to extend Tricare, the military health care program, to reservists. The Bush Administration objects to both provisions on cost grounds, saying benefits for active duty service members and those for reservists should differ because of the differing commitments each group has made.

-Congressional Quarterly (10/30) 

As Congress puts the finishing touches on this year’s spending bills, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) published a blistering attack on the annual appropriations process, which he calls “The Looting Process.”  He described the House Appropriations Committee has having “unwarranted power” and lobbyists as “shadow legislators,” stuffing each bill with “hundreds of pages of goodies for countless favored groups, industries, individual companies, and foreign governments.”  There is “zero incentive to control spending,” and any true fiscal conservative should “vote NO on every appropriations bill.”

-LewRockwell.com (10/28) 

The federal budget deficit hit a record $374.2 billion in 2003, more than doubling last year’s deficit of $157.8 billion, and easily passing the old record of $290.4 billion set in 1992.  Joshua Bolten, head of the president’s Office of Management and Budget, said that the deficit for the current 2004 budget year will be even higher, topping $500 billion.

-Associated Press (10/20)

The Office of Management and Budget’s annual report on the costs and benefits of government regulations pegs the annual cost of 107 major rules issued over the last ten years at between $36 billion and $42 billion.  It estimates the annual benefits of those rules at between $146 billion and $230 billion.  Critics say the OMB’s numbers understate costs and overstate benefits.  Federal agencies themselves submit the figures for the reports, and there is no standard accounting procedure. The report includes information only on eight agencies and seven regulatory programs rather than all federal rules, which federal law requires.  Critics equate regulation with an off-budget, hidden tax, and are demanding a “regulatory budget” akin to the fiscal budget Congress approves each year.  

-Forbes.com (10/1)