House ‘Minibus’ Not So Mini

Brian Riedl / December 10, 2009

Congressional leadership has unveiled an a $446.8 billion “minibus” that will cover six annual appropriations bills, leaving only the defense bill to pass separately. Assuming these bills pass, discretionary spending will have jumped by 8 percent for the third consecutive year since the Democrats took control of Congress in 2007. In those three years, regular discretionary spending has jumped 25 percent, from $873 billion to $1,090 billion. But that’s not all. The recent stimulus bill provided an additional $311 billion in “emergency” discretionary spending. Altogether, the last three Congressional Democratic budgets have spent $561 billion more in discretionary spending than if they had limited growth to the baseline inflation rate.

Non-defense discretionary programs—which have received most of the increases—have not exactly been starved in the past, either. From 2001 through 2008, these outlays grew 32 percent faster than inflation, due in part to large increases for education (31 percent), health research (30 percent), and international affairs (47 percent). Clearly, these programs do not need even more budget increases. Yet rather than ask federal agencies to join the American people in some recessionary belt-tightening, Congress gave these programs an 8 percent increase in FY 2009, and is in the process of adding another 8 percent for FY 2010 —not even counting the historic $311 billion in additional “stimulus” funding for these programs. (more…)