Romina Boccia
Romina Boccia and Dominik Lett
A government funding deadline is approaching this Friday, December 20, and congressional leadership appears poised to punt the annual funding debate to March with a stopgap funding measure. Disaster aid is at the heart of the current impasse. President Biden requested nearly $100 billion in emergency funding in the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton earlier last month, plus $24 billion for Ukraine. A host of nondisaster-related issues might hitch a ride on this year’s continuing resolution, including several health policy and farm extenders. On top of this, certain Social Security beneficiaries may get boosted benefits (at everyone else’s expense), with the Senate planning to consider the Social Security Fairness Act later this week.
With federal deficits already in the trillions, lawmakers should approach this funding debate skeptically, avoiding unnecessary and expensive add-ons that are all too common in emergency funding packages. At a minimum, Congress should offset new emergency spending wherever possible and pair the package with commonsense budget reforms to promote future fiscal restraint.
While most of Biden’s budget request addresses Hurricanes Helene and Milton, the administration has included several items that are entirely unrelated to the most recent hurricanes and hardly qualify as emergencies (necessary, sudden, urgent, unforeseen, and temporary).
For instance, $216 million is earmarked to increase base pay for the Forest Service’s wildland firefighting force. Another $733 million is allocated to replace two National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration “hurricane hunter” aircraft not slated for decommissioning until 2030. Billions more would be distributed among various agencies for long-term infrastructure and modernization upgrades. These issues are foreseeable and non-urgent. Accordingly, they should be funded through the regular appropriations process, if at all, not through emergency supplemental funding, which receives less oversight and is more prone to waste, fraud, and abuse.
The current disaster funding debate offers Congress an opportunity to address systemic issues in federal disaster relief. » Read More
https://www.cato.org/blog/congress-should-reject-blockbuster-christmas-stopgap-measure