|
Friday, May 09, 2008
War Supplemental Update: Blue Dogs Balk at Waiving PAYGO for GI Bill Extension
Just when Democratic House leadership thought it was safe to bring a $183.6* billion war supplemental spending bill to the House floor for a vote, the Blue Dog coalition bares their teeth. We briefly mentioned yesterday that the coalition has expressed their displeasure that an expansion of college benefits for veterans would not be offset. By signaling that they would not support the rules package under which the war supp would be debated, they have induced Democratic leadership to find offsets, thus postponing a vote until at least next week.
The provision is question is know in the Senate as the Post 9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008 (S. 22), a bill introduced by Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) and cosponsored by 57 senators. The CBO scored the bill as costing $40 million the first year, $680 million the second, and totalling almost $52 billion over ten years.
Blue Dogs' insistence on offsetting these costs has drawn the ire of the Out of Iraq Caucus. Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) was incredulous ($). "How can the Blue Dog Coalition possibly say that an expansion of education benefits is too costly when their votes to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to fight in Iraq violate the same pay-as-you-go rules they claim to so deeply respect? It's an inconsistent logic."
It might be inconsistent logic, but so go pay-as-you-go rules: They apply only to taxes and mandatory spending programs. College education benefits for veterans is direct spending (subject to PAYGO), while funding the daily operations of the Pentagon during a war is discretionary spending (not subject to PAYGO). Hinchey's comment, though, does highlight an important aspect of fiscal policy -- that all spending and revenue decisions come with trade-offs and tough decisions have to be made.
Parliamentary rules aimed to force lawmakers to make those decisions just happen to apply to only certain aspects of fiscal policy. Blue Dogs should be applauded for forcing the rest of Congress to take some responsibility when it comes to spending. However, Hinchey is correct to compare education benefits to war spending, as both represent funds that can be applied to any spending priority, and as such, the decision to spend on either one should come with a decision about who should pay for it or who should see fewer government services. Hopefully (but I'm not optimistic) the Blue Dogs' strict adherence to PAYGO will spread to other quarters -- especially to war spending -- and create a more fiscally responsible Congress.
*That's the commonly-used dollar amount in press accounts. That number, however, does not include $11 billion for extended unemployment benefits (over 10 ten years) and $720 million for expanded GI Bill benefits (over 2 years). With those factored in, the bill would be about $200 billion
Posted by Craig Jennings
|