One of the areas that has plagued our national spending addiction for quite some time has been the practice of unnecessary spending using several vehicles, including Earmarks and discretionary Appropriations. Considering the critical status of our national debt, we will generally not support either of these spending practices without strictly enforced caps and rules. This does come with a risk, as many long-standing legislators have clearly stated that this additional spending has been a method to “getting things done” with bi-partisan support. Earmarks, in particular, were eliminated by the GOP in 2011, but Democrats have stated they will bring them back in the 2021 congress.
What are these spending vehicles and how do they work?
Earmarks are typically funding for recipients and projects that are otherwise unbudgeted and circumvent competitive or merit-based processes. It often has virtually nothing to do with the intent of the host bill it is included within. This spending is almost always designed to benefit a congressman and their district, and ultimately is used as a method to gain that legislator’s vote on the overall bill that includes the earmark.
Discretionary Appropriations are items that are included within the Federal budget but are discretionary spending and not actually funded until money is appropriated by congress. Recent omnibus legislation has seen these discretionary appropriations added to bills to again ensure votes from the legislators whose constituents stand to benefit from those appropriations.
In most recent years, US Federal discretionary spending has approached $1.5T; half of those dollars are often for defense, depending on the current state of military sequestration vs. rebuild. The overall concept of discretionary spending, regardless of vehicle, is something that needs to be addressed through a structured and strict approach. To be clear, the platform does support discretionary spending, however certain criteria must be met and upheld:
- Legislators should present their party’s leadership with discretionary and non-budgeted projects, costs, and justifications each budget year. This does happen to a large extent already.
- All non-mandatory and discretionary spending must be limited to 27% of the overall federal budget each year. For reference, past caps for earmarks have been either unlimited or limited to 1% while discretionary spending has been up to 30% or higher. ACF proposes all earmark spending be capped at 0.5%, leaving 26.5% for all other non-mandatory spending.
- National spending must take precedent over foreign spending, however balance must be reached with State Department international initiatives that do have strong national interest justifications.
- So-called “pork barrel” and “earmark” spending should not ever take precedent over budgeted discretionary spending.
- Earmark spending MUST be shared between both GOP and Democrat party legislators each year, with neither party spending more that 48% of the available dollars, and the remaining 4% being open for negotiations between both parties and independents. This scale may slide, based on the proportion of possible third parties in congress.
This platform supports a fully approved and enacted budget as a requirement each year. The Federal government has not fully approved and enacted a budget for most of the last 30 years (where both houses and the White House have come to full budget agreement), and this has resulted in a stream of Continuing Resolutions and Omnibus legislations to keep the government funded and operating. This platform also supports a budget surplus each year that is at least 3%, which is applied directly to paydown of the national debt (above and beyond interest payments). This need is critical not just because of the level of debt, but also because of who holds that debt: Roughly 70% of the US national debt is actually held by our own domestic governments, including Social Security.