Congress Spenders Heavily Outnumber Savers

by Mike Godfrey, Tax-News.com, Washington

14 March 2006

The National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF) has conducted a study of Congressional members' spending wish-lists, which shows that attempts to spend more money out-number attempts to save it by 21 to 1 in the current Congress.

The NTUF's 'BillTally' analysis is a unique cost accounting system that computes a "net annual agenda" for each Member of Congress (and has done so since 1991). The results are based on each Senator's or Representative's individual sponsorship or cosponsorship of pending legislation, and provide an in-depth look at the fiscal behavior of lawmakers, free from the influence of committees, party leaders, and rules surrounding floor votes. All cost estimates for bills are obtained from third-party sources or are calculated from neutral data. Within the first seven months of the 109th Congress, NTUF identified 1,059 House and Senate bills with a budget impact of plus or minus $1 million. Highlights of the study include:

• Through the 2005 August recess, over 21 bills in the House were introduced to raise spending for every bill to lower spending. This is actually an improvement from the previous Congress (2003), during which the ratio was 23 to 1. In the Senate, 30 spending-hike bills were introduced for every spending-cut bill, worse than the 22 to 1 ratio in 2003.
• The average House Republican's wish list would increase federal spending by a net $11.0 billion, half of what he or she proposed in 2003 but still a far cry from 1995's average of minus $18.2 billion. The typical GOP Senator advocated a $5.1 billion agenda, roughly one-fifth of what he or she sought in spending hikes during the opening of 2003.
• The average House Democrat had a $444.7 billion agenda, the highest of any of the past seven Congresses. Senate Democrats, however, brought their average down to $34.3 billion, roughly one-third of 2003's level and the lowest since the 106th Congress (1999).
• The number of lawmakers with higher-spending agendas ($100 billion or more) shrunk from 139 in the previous Congress to 75 in the current Congress. However, 82 Representatives and 75 Senators could not find a single bill to sponsor or cosponsor that would bring down federal outlays.
• Democratic freshman lawmakers had far lower-cost spending agendas (half in the House and one-third less in the Senate) than their senior Democratic colleagues. Yet, the opposite was true for freshman GOP Representatives and Senators, who proposed over 50 percent and 10 percent more, respectively, than longer-serving Republicans.
• House Members of both parties from liberal "blue states" had higher average agendas than their conservative "red state" colleagues, but in the Senate, the trend only held for Democrats.

"The hurricanes that struck during the August recess of 2005 changed the atmosphere in Washington," NTUF Senior Policy Analyst and study author Demian Brady concluded. "In response to the disaster, tens of billions were promised for relief, even as Congressional coalitions emerged to call for offsetting reductions and public ire grew more intense over spending earmarks. These developments may prod fiscal reforms, but as BillTally shows, lawmakers still have some math to do if they want to balance their overall spending agendas."

NTUF is the non-partisan research arm of the 350,000-member National Taxpayers Union, a citizen group founded in 1969.

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