Congress Narrowly Avoids Shutdown With Performative Last-Minute Deals

Congress has concocted a deal to keep the government funded and avoid a shutdown.  Fair enough. Keeping the wheels turning is one of the more mundane, but essential, functions of an elected member of Congress.

But so, too, is bringing home the bacon. And it’s that lubrication – call it pork-barrel spending, honest graft, or earmarks — is back. In a big, expensive way.

As Utah Sen. Mike Lee posted to X:

There are over 6,000 earmarks in the bill, costing taxpayers a total of $12.7 billion. 

There is no way any mortal could actually vet all of the earmarks in the 48-hour time period they’ve given us so far.

And what a list of goodies they are. The Heritage Foundation’s David Ditch dove into the fine print and discovered all sorts of interesting – as in horrifying – spending, carve-outs, emergencies, and other only-in-Congress gimmicks. These include phantom spending cuts:

P. 352 has the worst gimmick: a $12.44 billion “rescission” (cut) to the Department of Commerce “nonrecurring expense fund”. The problem: this is a fake fund that was created as part of last year’s debt limit deal. They use this fake cut to claim savings and spend more.

A fake budget cut? Yes, folks, it’s just another day in congressional budget-land. As Reason’s Eric Boehm writes of the phantom cut:

…this gimmick contains all three elements of a classic magic trick. There’s the pledge, which is the Fiscal Responsibility Act’s placement of $22 billion in the Commerce Department’s budgetary authority. There’s the turn, where the magician makes something disappear—in this case, the rescission included in the new budget deal. And then there’s the prestige, in which that spending reappears as funding for various agencies and bureaucracies across the rest of the federal government.

The rest of us are the marks in the audience who aren’t quite sure what just happened.

Which is the whole point. No actual dollars were cut, nevermind saved. But the worthies were able to pretend they were steely-eyed budget cutters for a moment or two. 

Or just long enough to get out the press release telling the folks at home about how careful Congressman X is with your money. 

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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