To hear the media tell it, Congress finally passing spending bills and avoiding a government shutdown is a “win.” That’s how low the bar for accomplishment in Washington, D.C. has sunk. However, the value to the American public becomes questionable upon considering what the collection of legislative sausage contains.
For example, the spending laws contain $14.5 billion in earmarks – projects specifically requested by members of Congress. While this can mean upgrading waterways and other worthwhile infrastructure, there are also many wasteful and inappropriate handouts that have no business receiving tax dollars.
In particular, leftist members have shown that they have few compunctions about requesting and approving federal funds for activist groups that work on behalf of “progressive” causes.
While it’s fine for individuals to choose to donate to a cause based on their beliefs, it’s another thing entirely to use Uncle Sam to strong-arm taxpayers into supporting organizations they disagree with.
For example, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., secured $500,000 for the NAACP’s headquarters in Baltimore. While the NAACP was an important organization during the fight for universal civil rights in the 20th century, it has devolved into a highly partisan outfit promoting the ideological Left’s social agenda.
Similarly, Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, both D-N.Y., got a $1 million earmark for WE ACT for Environmental Justice in New York City. WE ACT isn’t focused on performing a charitable public service such as cleaning up parks or neighborhoods. Instead, it’s an activist group that lobbies for a radical leftist policy agenda including racial grievances, tax-and-spend economics, and a wide range of job-destroying regulations.
It’s easy to imagine the media firestorm that would ensue if conservative members sought earmarks for conservative groups such as the NRA or the National Right to Life Committee, but the press generally sees nothing wrong with handouts to the Left.
In fact, the most noteworthy instance of journalistic inquiry into this year’s earmarks didn’t come from a mainstream publication, but instead from John Shelton of the conservative group Advancing American Freedom.
Sens. Bob Casey and John Fetterman, both D-Pa., received initial approval for a $1 million earmark to the William Way LGBT Community Center in Philadelphia. Even though the organization has financial backing from Merck, NovaCare, Urban Outfitters, and Macy’s, the legislators believed that it was worth adding to the $34.6 trillion gross national debt for.
Posting on X (formerly Twitter), Mr. Shelton pointed out that the William Way group hosted a monthly fetish party and had drag shows with performers as young as 11 years old.
The facts were publicly available online, showing a lack of due diligence on the part of the senators and the Senate Appropriations Committee. These revelations caused a flurry of activity behind closed doors in Congress as Democrats quickly moved to quash the earmark before it could gain more widespread attention. Although Sen. Fetterman claimed that he did not agree to the earmark’s removal, the removal happened anyway.
The removal marked one of the few straightforward policy wins for conservatives in the spending package, although stopping a politically radioactive earmark would ideally not have required a last-minute intervention.
In fact, the William Way fiasco highlights one of the central problems with the federal government: it spends too much money on too many things for either Congress or the public to properly keep track of. There’s no telling how many of the thousands of annual earmark requests would fall apart under modest scrutiny. Unfortunately, most of the media is either disinterested in overseeing federal spending or are barely concealed cheerleaders for big government.
With the government too big to manage and inflationary deficit spending spending growing out of control, Congress must finally start cutting back on the endless array of federal programs and bureaucracies. Otherwise, there’s no telling how many more radical groups will receive ill-gotten gains.
David Ditch on March 23, 2024
