Eliminating fraud and waste in government is the perennial favorite of politicians when they’re looking for ways to justify new spending. They constantly use the catch phrase “fraud and waste” as the source of funding some new expenditure.
However, the public rarely demands a list of the specific expenditures that comprise the dreaded fraud and waste that should be eliminated. There are, of course, generalizations, such as the fraud and waste that is found in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. But once the proposed legislation has been approved and signed into law, we never hear of any fraud and/or waste subsequently being found to pay for it.
Perhaps the most challenging aspect of the fraud and waste issue is defining it. On closer inspection, we find that one person’s fraud and/or waste is another person’s legitimate benefit or incentive that was actually created by the very same politicians who now seek to eliminate it.
Citizens Against Government Waste produces an annual summary of pork-barrel spending that is aptly named the Congressional Pig Book. CAGW’s 2010 Congressional Pig Book Summary highlights the usual litany of congressional misuse of government funds that have been appropriated by various members of Congress for the benefit of a wide variety of individuals and causes. These appropriations are generally attached to other bills as they make their way through the approval process and rarely see the light of day or are subjected to any sort of critical analysis in a sort of wink, wink, unwritten agreement that “if you vote for my bill, I will vote for yours.”
Pretty much everyone goes along to get along, while the public is kept in the dark — unless, of course, they happen to be a beneficiary of a particular piece of pork-barrel legislation.
CAGW’s spring 2010 newsletter noted that in 1991, the year of their first Pig Book, there were 546 projects with a total value of $3.2 billion. The numbers in 2010 were 9,129 projects with a total cost of $16.5 billion. Not surprisingly, as the federal budget has grown, so have the number and total cost of earmarks.
The “pork-barrel” appropriations included in the 2010 Pig Book were grouped in the following categories:
» I. Agriculture: 475 projects, total $396.5 million.
» II. Commerce, Justice, Science: 1,510 projects, total $714.4 million.
» III. Defense: 1,752 projects, total $10.3 billion.
» IV. Energy and Water: 939 projects, total $1.2 billion.
» V. Financial Services: 260 projects, total $65 million.
» VI. Homeland Security: 173 projects, total $242.8 million.
» VII. Interior: 548 projects, total $361.1 million.
» VIII. Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education: 1,789 projects, total $813.8 million.
» IX. Legislative Branch: Only one earmark was requested, total $200,000. (Note: The lone earmark was attached to the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, which includes increases for staff salaries, money for parties for dignitaries, and $500,000 for a “pilot program” to send postcards to their constituents about town meetings.)
» X. Military Construction: 182 projects, total $1.1 billion.
» XI. State and Foreign Operations: Seven earmarks, total $209.4 million.
» XII. Transportation/Housing and Urban Development: 1,483 earmarks, total $1.2 billion.
Last year, the Obama administration and Congress added $1.4 trillion to the national debt, more than the total deficit of the prior four years, and Sen. George LeMieux, R-Fla., noted, “Unless Washington’s lawmakers reverse course on spending, our deficits will continue to rise and our nation’s debt will suffocate prosperity. … In the last fiscal year alone, Congress gave the State Department a 32 percent increase, the Environmental Protection Agency a 35 percent increase and most all other federal departments and agencies saw increases well above inflation. … The current earmark process is the engine that drives the train. Earmarks have become the tools used to build support for the annual appropriations bills that fund the basic functions of our government. Distracting attention from oversight, members often become focused on how much money they are able to get for their district or state.”
Although this year’s earmarks are a relatively small portion of the total federal budget ($16.5 billion vs. more than $1.4 trillion), they are symptomatic of what’s wrong with the way our government and the people who run it operate. It’s always about getting more money to spend — never less — and the method of budgeting that Congress uses is deliberately designed to produce bigger budgets year after year — forever.
Federal budgets are developed using a method that is described as “traditional incremental budgeting,” with departmental managers having to justify only increases over the previous year’s budget, and what has been already spent is automatically approved.
The system is rigged to always provide bigger budgets, never smaller, and no one ever spends less than their budget allows for fear that, if they do, their budget for the next year will be reduced by the amount they don’t use. Unless and until we wake up and change the way we do things, earmarks and spending will continue to grow until we simply go broke, which many people believe has already happened. At some point, budgets and earmarks won’t matter, because there simply won’t be any money available to spend.
My conclusion is that, when it comes to fraud and waste, the best way to combat the problem in government would be to replace the big spenders in Washington.
— Harris R. Sherline is a retired CPA and former chairman and CEO of Santa Ynez Valley Hospital who as lived in Santa Barbara County for more than 30 years. He stays active writing opinion columns and his blog, Opinionfest.com.