Thursday, August 24, 2023

Biden Administration Makes Mockery of ‘Emergency’ Spending

 Remember how, mere months ago, the debt-ceiling deal struck between Democrats and Republicans to avoid a government shutdown was touted as "An historic first step toward shifting government back toward common sense and conservatism"? The hope was that the spending caps in the deal would actually constrain spending.

In theory, there's nothing wrong with emergency spending.

The problem comes when politicians shamelessly abuse the emergency label to push through non-emergency spending that would otherwise violate budget constraints.

Putting the "Emergency" label on anything important but not unforeseen makes a mockery of budget rules and the debt-ceiling caps and of the very concept of emergency spending.

Very quickly, emergency spending became the tool of choice for avoiding budget constraints and dramatically increasing government spending.

The best option would be to stop exempting emergency spending from budget rules.

Because Congress is untrustworthy when it comes to following just about any rule that keeps it from spending more money, approval of all emergency spending should require a supermajority vote - a level of approval that should be easy to get in genuine emergencies.

https://spectator.org/biden-administration-makes-mockery-of-emergency-spending/

No comments:

Post a Comment