Inside D.C.

Omnibus and taxes — an embarrassment of riches

It never ceases to amaze how quickly Congress can move when it wants to.  The House and the Senate this week successfully spent about $2 trillion of your tax dollars in less than 72 hours, approving a $680-billion tax bill, following that act of fiscal largesse with approval of the $1.19-trillion FY2016 omnibus spending package so as to avoid shutting down the federal government for Christmas.

The tax bill – which began life as a mere $90-plus-billion two-year extension of expired 2014 tax breaks in the Senate – morphed to the fiscal behemoth it is through a bidding war over which party could make its list of favorite “temporary” tax breaks permanent.  Lots of loud voices on both sides of the aisle and from both sides of the Hill and the White House rambled on in floor speeches about business certainty, much-needed relief for the middle class, etc.   None of that removes the fact the total cost of this bill goes straight to increasing the federal deficit – not one cent was offset by cuts elsewhere in the federal budget.

Congress is supposed to approve 12 independent spending bills, but failed again.  And there used to be an unwritten rule about not legislating on appropriations bills.  Spending bills were supposed to be objective determinations of worthy government programs in need of funding and then how much of our tax dollars would go to pay for those worthy programs.

Then the system was plagued by “earmarks,” monies designated so specifically to projects within a lawmaker’s state or district that no other entity benefitted.  Congress got rid of earmarks because they were at least unseemly and at most, examples of unalloyed greed since much of the money was scarfed up by the most senior members of the Appropriations Committees and their cronies.  Remember the multi-million-dollar “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska?  While there’s been chatter about bringing earmarks back, no member has been brave enough or politically suicidal enough to try and force the issue.

However, the omnibus spending package carried more policy riders – the new earmarks – than it did spending, or so it seemed from the horse trading that went on during the final days of this first session of the 114th Congress.  Cleverly worded sections of the spending sections either increased monies or withheld monies, depending on the member’s political motives and influence.  Everything from guidelines for labeling genetically engineered salmon – which FDA said a month ago don’t need labels – to ensuring dried distillers grains given or sold to farmers as cheap animal feed aren’t regulated under new food safety laws, was shoe-horned into the 2000-plus-page bill.

Had the boys and girls on Capitol Hill used the 12 months of 2015 to do the work for which they were elected, both of these fiscal follies could have been avoided.  All of this had more to do with rabid political self-interest than it did national good; more to do with political points with the home town crowd than smart spending or tax policy, and a whole lot to do with the need to grab those fiscal cookies in 2015, so the venality that is appropriations doesn’t stain folks up for reelection in 2016.

Some alibied the tax bill as a “good first step” toward much-needed tax reform.  Maybe that’s true if members are willing to admit the tax bill they just approved is symptomatic of everything wrong with the tax code.  Some talked of the omnibus spending bill as though it was an effort of which Congress could be proud, rather than the embarrassment it is.

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