Keep on trying, Sen. Inhofe
November 28, 2005

House Republican leaders finally got their act together last week and managed to pass their Deficit Reduction Act and take one small step toward bringing federal spending under control. The difficulty they encountered in enacting even minuscule savings, however, should convince them that what is needed is structural reform of the process rather than daily attempts to scale back programs with major support among their colleagues.

Oklahoma's Sen. Jim Inhofe (R) has taken pains to remind conservatives and Republicans alike that eliminating an earmark here and there will have little impact on total spending, and, of course, he's right. Even before the House vote on reconciliation late last week, news was spreading that Alaska had given up trying to save what came to be known as "the Bridge to Nowhere."

The bridge had, of course, become a symbol of the out-of-control spending that has characterized recent Congresses. It appeared on the cover of Parade magazine, and anti-spending forces vowed to defeat it even at the risk of enraging some of the most powerful members of both houses. They succeeded and celebrated, but buried in stories of their victory was the news that, while the bridge might not be built, the money thus "saved" will be freed up for other transportation projects in Alaska.

This little detail may have been passed over by some, but it underscores the difficulty of a purely tactical approach to spending reduction. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) went ballistic earlier when it was suggested that the bridge be canceled and the money thus saved be spent instead in Louisiana, but seemed less than upset at the denouement since it had no real impact on money that would flow into his state.

The problem is not just or even primarily the earmarks, but the inability or unwillingness of elected officials to maintain anything even resembling discipline vis-à-vis overall spending. One wonders if very many members of Congress really even think about the deficit or its consequences or connect it with their own activities.

Self-delusion is just too easy. After all, what impact will one little earmark have on either the deficit or the budget? Besides, the reality of the way in which Congress operates convinces most members that if they don't fight for everything they can get for their constituents, the money won't be saved but grabbed by others and sent home to voters in their districts and states.

One can argue it was outrage over things like the Alaskan bridge that made it possible to pass last week's reconciliation bill, but most of the outrage over earmarks smacked more of venting than a push for real reform. The task is to harness that outrage in a push for structural change.

Inhofe tried last week. He tried to amend the reconciliation bill to require a two-thirds vote to increase non-defense, non-trust-fund discretionary spending over a previous year's levels. The effort failed.

In past decades there was support in Congress for such reform either through procedural strictures such as those imposed for a time by Gramm-Rudman-Hollings or a constitutional balanced-budget amendment.

The late Barber Conable, who served for many years as ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee and later as president of the World Bank, was the chief sponsor of a balanced-budget amendment with real teeth back in the '80s. When asked why he felt so strongly about the need for structural spending restraints, Conable said it was because the existing system almost forces good people to do bad things.

Then-Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.) put the matter succinctly in 1996 at a time when the collapse of the Soviet empire, a burgeoning economy and partisan differences between the Clinton administration and a Republican Congress were combining to produce surpluses.

"People elected to public office like to do popular things, not unpopular things, and there is no popular way to balance a budget. We need the muscle of a constitutional amendment to force us to do it. Without such an amendment, in 10 years the budget will be mired in deficit."

The amendment failed by just one vote in 1997, and there has been no serious attempt to bring it back since, as both parties have come up with more and more reasons why we ought to be spending more and more money.

There are other structural or procedural reforms short of such an amendment that might help, and Inhofe's amendment would have been a step in the right direction.

One can only hope that he'll keep trying.

Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, is a managing associate with Carmen Group, a D.C.-based governmental-affairs firm (www.carmengrouplobbying.com).