Washington D.C. is Dysfunction Junction as Congress is Set to Play Grinch for Taxpayers

There seems to be a great deal of lack of leadership,  confusion, mismanagement, and fingerprinting in the nation’s capitol when it comes to strategy for the future… and we’re not talking about the Washington Redskins; it’s Congress.  Both chambers of Congress were back in session this week, but for only a limited time and from all indicators it seems that they are ready to make your holidays more expensive than you expected. The House of Representatives is expected to finish their legislative business for the year on Friday and the Senate is expected to adjourn for the year sometime next week, which gives the two chambers only a short time period to conclude any work they want to accomplish for the 2013 calendar year. Details have been emerging over the past several days about what exactly the House and Senate are expected to push through before their respective holiday recesses and from all that has been revealed so far, it doesn’t look good for the taxpayers. Here’s a breakdown of the business at hand.

Budget and the future of sequestration

First, a budget agreement was announced late on December 10 that may be voted on in the House late this week and the Senate early next week. Negotiations between Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) produced a final deal based on a framework that, from what has been made public so far, is a step in the wrong direction and a early lump of coal for taxpayers. There are no meaningful reforms on entitlements or the tax structure (individual or corporate), and there may very well be increases on taxes/fees, but what the biggest problem is with this deal is that it could very well be the first step in undoing the sequester. Regardless of the menial reforms that budget conferees are seeking in the short terms to levy the coming 2014 sequestration cuts, altering the spending caps should be a non-starter for any agreement that comes to the table. When elected officials are ready to tackle the real problem of long-term spending, then and only then should they have the means to get rid of sequestration, which they agreed to in the first place as a result of their failure to identify detailed long-term budget cuts as the nation continues to grapple with a $17 trillion dollar debt. You can read TPA’s statement on the budget deal here, as well as a coalition letter urging preservation of the BCA 2011 spending caps.

Farm Bill

The battle over the Farm Bill is one that just won’t seem to end, and from the latest reports it appears that the mass agriculture policy bill won’t be seeing the finish line in 2013. TPA has been focused on the Farm Bill throughout the entire process. The Senate passed an awful version in June, and though initially it seemed the House would stop the affront to taxpayers by voting down their version, a second vote was held and the House’s “less bad” version also passed.  Conferees were put in place to come up with a compromise bill and though Agriculture Committee Chairs Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) were indicating that an end-of-year deal was imminent, , it appears that is unlikely now. There are talks of extending current law to buy more time into 2014, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has stated that won’t happen. Though we won’t know what is in a final conferee deal on the Farm Bill until January, we do know this: current versions of the legislation lack meaningful reforms needed to address the fundamental problems in US Agriculture Policy.

National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)

Finally there is the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This summer, the House of Representatives passed its own NDAA and the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) made sure to pay careful attention to everything that was added and removed during the entire legislative process. The Senate attempted to pass their own version before Thanksgiving but due to issues concerning amendments and the change in Senate rules change that took place, no deal was reached. Now, a new strategy has emerged on how to get an NDAA through both chambers over the next week and a half. The goal is to “ping-pong” the bill, essentially having the house vote on a full NDAA this week that the Senate would quickly vote on next week without making major changes. This process would hinder any amendments aimed at meaningful reforms that could attack the problem of wasteful spending at the Pentagon, a problem we seem to hear something new about every week. The summary can be found here.

The remaining business of the Congress is anything but settled as of now and details continue to trickle out about the Farm Bill, NDAA, and the Budget Deal. TPA will continue to monitor what happens over the next several days and while we hope that taxpayers don’t get the worst out of these bills, we aren’t very hopeful from what we’ve seen thus far.