Study: Lawmakers' Urge to Splurge Hits Ten-Year High; Of 5,501 Bills Introduced in '01, Just 50 Would Cut Spending

6/11/2002

From: Tom McClusky or Jerry Terry, 703-683-5700 both of the National Taxpayers Union Foundation

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 11 -- The urge to splurge taxpayer dollars didn't begin with this month's Supplemental Appropriations Bill, according to an exhaustive BillTally analysis released today by the non-partisan National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF). Last year marked the first session of Congress in a decade where lawmakers of both major parties in the House and Senate had net average agendas that would increase federal spending.

"Last year was a watershed not only for America's national security, but its fiscal security as well," said NTUF Senior Policy Analyst and study author Tom McClusky. "An escalating trend towards greater sponsorship of spending proposals became an all-out war of political opportunism for some lawmakers after September 11."

Since 1991, NTUF's unique BillTally cost accounting system has computed a "net annual agenda cost" for each Member of Congress, based on individual sponsorships and cosponsorships of pending legislation. This often-overlooked aspect of fiscal behavior is important because it represents each lawmaker's individual spending priorities, free from the influence of Committees, party leaders, and rules surrounding floor votes. All cost estimates for bills are obtained from 3rd-party sources or calculated from neutral data. This latest survey identified 690 House and 404 Senate bills introduced during 2001 that had a fiscal impact of plus/minus $1 million (out 5,501 bills of all kinds). Among the findings:

-- House bills that proposed to increase spending outnumbered decrease bills by 17.65 to 1; on the Senate side, the ratio of increases to cuts was 30.1 to 1. Of the 13 spending reductions introduced in the Senate, just 4 came from Republicans.

-- The average House Democrat had a net (increases minus cuts) agenda that would, on average, raise federal spending by $262.4 billion per year (an increase of more than 13 percent over current outlays, and an 800 percent jump from their average agenda in the last Congress). House Republicans posted a net overall agenda of $19.8 billion -- a switch from last year's average that proposed to cut spending by $4.6 billion.

-- In the Upper Chamber, Democrats boosted their agendas six-fold, to $88.2 billion; Republicans shifted from a $0.3 billion average cut agenda in the last Congress to an $18.7 billion increase in 2001.

-- All told, this is the first Congress since the 102nd (1991) where both major parties in both Chambers finished the First Session with net average bill sponsorships that would hike federal spending.

-- If current sponsorship trends continue, the highs as well as the averages will reach new marks. NTUF projects that by Labor Day 2002, Congress will likely have several members with trillion-dollar agendas.

-- Long before the current controversy over Supplemental Appropriations pork, NTUF researchers identified a number of 2001 bills claiming to address post-September 11 issues that had little or no real connection to national security, including expansion of Illinois airports, Medicaid benefits, and dairy and peanut subsidies.

-- Only 31 lawmakers out of 433 studied had net total agendas that would cut federal spending. This marked two firsts in the history of BillTally -- just one of the 31 would-be cutters served in the Senate, and that lawmaker was a Democrat (Russ Feingold of Wisconsin).

"Americans were rewarded early last year with a tax cut that would begin to return their hard-money, but unless Congress begins to tighten the belt on the federal budget's bulging waistline, further cuts will not be realized," McClusky concluded. "The brave new world after September 11 requires fiscal fortitude more than ever."

NTUF is the research affiliate of the 335,000-member National Taxpayers Union. The BillTally report, The First Session of the 107th Congress: Brave New World, Same Old Congress?, is available online at www.ntu.org or upon request at (703) 683-5700. BillTally data for each Member of Congress can be found at www.ntu.org/ntuf_billtally.