Study: Despite Deficit Fears, Congress Raised Specter of Spending Hikes

10/31/2003

From: Demian Brady or Pete Sepp of the National Taxpayers Union, 703-683-5700

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 31 -- Most lawmakers who put a frightful face on federal deficits were masking high-spending legislative agendas that would actually worsen the problem, according to the latest BillTally study released today by the non-partisan National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF). Just 26 lawmakers in the last Congress had legislative agendas that would reduce overall federal spending, while 32 lawmakers would raise the annual budget by more than $1 trillion -- the most lopsided levels ever recorded in the project's 12-year history.

"Taxpayers hoping to see federal spending restraint will be disappointed to learn that the 107th Congress took a long holiday from this task," said NTUF Senior Policy Analyst and study author Demian Brady. "When special interests knocked on Congress's door asking for tax-funded treats, most lawmakers were willing to oblige even when it wasn't Halloween."

BillTally is a cost accounting system that computes a net annual agenda for each Member of Congress and has done so since 1991. The results are based on each Member's individual sponsorship and cosponsorship of pending legislation. The study offers a unique look at the fiscal behavior of lawmakers, free from the influence of committees, party leaders, and rules surrounding floor votes.

All cost estimates for bills are obtained from third-party sources or calculated from neutral data. Within the 107th Congress, a record-high number of bills were identified as having a fiscal impact of at least $1 million (1,186 in the House and 851 in the Senate). Among the author's findings:

-- A record-low of 26 Representatives sponsored bills that, if enacted all at once, would reduce federal spending; not a single Senator had a net cutting agenda. As recently as the 104th Congress, a comfortable majority in both chambers could claim to sponsor net spending reductions.

-- For the first time ever, BillTally found individual Representatives (32 in all) who would raise federal spending by at least $1 trillion (50 percent of current outlays) annually. The House average was $222.9 billion, while the average Senator would boost the budget by $92.9 billion per year.

-- In the House, nearly 24 bills were introduced to increase outlays for every bill to cut spending. In the Senate the ratio was 36:1, while the combined total for both chambers was 28:1.

-- House Democrats called for an average of $417.6 billion in new spending, nearly 13 times more than House Republicans ($32.3 billion). Annualized over 10 years this level of increases ($4.2 trillion) is over twice the size of the tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003 combined ($1.7 trillion).

-- Despite this difference, both political parties in the House proposed agendas that were 7 times higher than their average 106th Congress totals. In the Senate, the spending sponsorship gap was only somewhat narrower ($150.9 billion/Democrats vs. $32.3 billion/Republicans).

"The results of sponsorship records during the 107th Congress show that there is indeed a difference between Republicans and Democrats: one party proposes bigger government, while the other party proposes much bigger government," Brady concluded. "For taxpayers who prefer prudence to profligacy, reversing this trend will remain their top concern."

NTUF is the research affiliate of the 350,000-member National Taxpayers Union. NTUF's BillTally report, Policy Paper 145, "Will to Profligacy or Will to Prudence?," is available online at http://www.ntu.org. The study contains a wealth of data on lawmakers' individual and collective spending habits.