M E R I D I A N     M A G A Z I N E

How to Spend Billions of Dollars Without Really Trying
by Jack Anderson

I'm not ashamed to admit that as a young boy I swallowed great doses of patriotism for which I still get periodic twinges. I was brought up to respect the government and its processes, but I was also taught the primacy of the spiritual over the temporal, and the importance of individual effort. We, the people, by our own freedom of will were supposed to place limits on the government.

Inbred in most of us is a natural skepticism toward the claims of omnipotence politicians are likely to make. Our Founding Fathers were so repulsed by the notion of an omnipotent federal government that they devoted most of their deliberations at the Constitutional Convention to the subject of how to keep the president and congress out of our lives.

They settled on the tenth amendment which mandates that any power not expressly given to the federal government belongs either to the people or to the states.

What in the world happened? By degrees, we Americans got what we paid for-BIG GOVERNMENT. The three words that guide any investigative reporter are the same advice that The Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Cal Bernstein got during the Watergate Investigation: "follow the money." Those are words to live by for a reporter trying to get to the root of most stories. When historians write the chronicles of our times, they will find it was the money-the squandering of it, the manipulation of it, the love of it-that brought us the very money-weighted, top-heavy government that the Founding Fathers feared.

The budget procession on Capitol Hill resembles a Japanese Kabuki dance. This is a traditional Japanese drama which can best be described as an elaborate pretense. The actors wear lavish wigs and makeup. They go through ostentatious motions, singing and dancing with stylized poses and gestures. This is precisely how members of Congress perform when they prepare the federal budget.

Like the Kabuki dance, this annual ritual has become an art form-an elaborate performance that distorts reality. The Congressional performers hide behind masks that present false faces to the public. There stylized statements and ritualistic movements are all part of a great pretense. But let me tell you what really goes on behind the scenes.

The president's budget arrives on Capitol Hill laden with necessity and fantasy. The problem is distinguishing one from the other. The budget hits the halls of Congress in early February and is parceled out to the House and Senate budget committees for hearings.

The important thing to keep in mind is that the president's performance, his stomping and loud singing mean absolutely nothing. He has no power to spend your money. Only Congress can do that. The way Congress doles out the money is so baffling that it discourages all but those that stand to gain from participating in it from even trying to follow the process.

Budget committees in each chamber scribble numbers all over the president's budget then send the hodge podge to the House and Senate chambers for passage. Then they put their heads together to merge the House and Senate versions. What comes out of all of this rigamarole is a "concurrent budget resolution."

By this time it will be mid-April and the budget will still mean next to nothing. Congress has decided what it would like to spend money on; it has put a limit on how much money it will spend. Incredibly, after all this singing and prancing, Congress hasn't authorized spending any money and the president never signs the resolution.

Yet already, we tax payers have had to put up the money and are pelted with verbiage through our representatives on Capitol Hill, taking credit for championing vital projects to our community and slashing wasteful spending on other communities.

In phase two, the budget resolution is turned over to an array of Congressional committees with authority over various agencies. These committees then debate whether the money proposed in the budget resolution should actually be spent. They write authorizing bills that the House and Senate must pass and send to the president for his signature.

In phase three, the House and Senate appropriations committee-and all their little sub-committees-review each of the authorization bills and how much of the money each of the lucky programs will actually receive. If you're still reading this, it's now time to approach the appropriation committees which have the real power in the process. Despite all the dealing and dickering that has gone on before, these committees can decide to leave approved programs high and dry without any money and to fund programs that have never been authorized.

This conveniently allows your Congressmen to take credit for approving a federal goodie for you, while at the same time voting against funding for that goody. He/she would like to be able to cite as evidence actual votes that only insiders would recognize as votes for nothing. I would call the end product zero-financing. The way it works is that the budgeteers keep a locked file of zeros that they can pull out to insert where they choose in this wonderland budget. They can borrow these goose eggs from the future to pay for the present at the same time, they declare that the books are balanced.

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