Fiscal Champs: Coburn and DeMint
Big news, folks. Late yesterday afternoon, Senate Leadership intimated that they will not pass any of the remaining spending bills for the current fiscal year. Instead, they will pass a "continuing resolution" (CR) next month that would require all discretionary spending besides Defense and Homeland Security to be funded at last year's levels.
This may sound like arcane stuff, but it gets juicier. Stay with me.
The continuing resolution is expected to only last until mid-January. At that time, the new Democratic Congress would be forced to deal with it. But because these big spending bills would bog down their new legislative agenda, they may be tempted to pass a full-year CR just to get it out of the way.
If that happens, then this continuing resolution would signify a huge victory for fiscal conservatives. And it's all because of Senators Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint (who were both elected with strong Club member support in 2004).
Between the two of them, they blocked all of the spending legislation unless it was stripped of wasteful pork. Their antagonists, the appropriators, wanted their budget-busting pork projects, but couldn't risk engaging Coburn and DeMint in a public showdown. If they did that, it would have been a battle of intransigent personalities, and Coburn has already demonstrated his ability to not back down under pressure (Likewise DeMint, already a strong fiscal conservative, is quickly proving that his abilities are increasing to "superpower" status).
Had the appropriators challenged Coburn and DeMint, their only weapon would have been to threaten to shut the government down (if the spending bills aren't allowed to pass and a CR is not issued, the government is forced to shut down). And that was something they weren't willing to commit to.
So...if Congress does pass the CR as is currently expected in December, and the Democrats subsequently extend it for a full year, then Coburn and DeMint will have unilaterally saved taxpayers a whopping $17 billion!
That's 17 followed by 9 zeros! It's also roughly the same as Nicaragua's GDP!
Already, federal bureaucrats in DC are howling like Chicken Little in protest to the possible CR. A CongressDaily headline reads, "Agencies Say Long-Term CR Would Devastate Programs".
Countering that was this:
A Coburn spokesman called such concerns "absurd." Given government spending has increased 50 percent since 2001 "any agency that can't figure out how to function under a one-year CR is incompetent, he said. [...]"If appropriators took this seriously they wouldn't be wasting time earmarking and putting stoplights in their districts. The hypocrisy is astounding."
Zing!
If all of this plays out the way it should, and for the moment it seems likely, then this would be one of the best legislative victories for the entire year.
And we have Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint to thank for it. As one blogger put it, they are "two powerful, principled and effective voices for spending restraint, instead of pork-barrel establishmentarians.”
UPDATE: I suppose I should offer up the two alternative scenarios. If the appropriators do decide to challenge Coburn and DeMint when the Senate reconvenes on December 4th, then Coburn would force a vote on dozens of amendments that would defund the pork projects (I'm told he already has 40 such amendments in the hopper). With Christmas right around the corner, no Senator wants to sit through that.
Alternatively, if the CR does pass in December, and the Democrats decide to try to pass the spending bills rather than issue a full-year CR, then they will be forced to deal with Coburn and DeMint as well. And guess how that will look --- they will be using their new position in the majority to bust a budget with pork projects! And this is after they've spent months and months screaming about the GOP's irresponsible spending habits. No, I'm inclined to believe that they would rather issue a full-year CR and be done with it.
UPDATE II: The Heritage Foundation sent me this handy table of all of the spending bills.
