FALSE ECONOMIES - CONGRESS PROPOSES EXCESSIVE BUDGET CUTS

Even As It Plans To Overspend On Fake Emergencies

Like a drug addict promising to quit after one more fix, the House has
set 2001 spending targets that would require drastic cuts in domestic
programs, while simultaneously larding an emergency spending bill for
2000 with billions of dollars in nonemergency spending.

Cuts deep enough to hit the Republican majority's parsimonious target
for discretionary domestic spending in 2001 are ill-advised. They are
also politically unpalatable: In recent years, even Republicans had no
stomach for them. The budget resolution also fails as a political
statement. It's hard to believe Republicans really mean to slash
spending when they ballooned a White House request for $5.2 billion in
emergency spending into a $13-billion supplemental
appropriation.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said he would strip the
bill of pork or shelve it and consider the spending in the normal 2001
appropriations process. Truth in packaging is what's needed.

An emergency spending bill should contain spending only for real
emergencies.

The $13-billion House bill includes $2.8 billion for military
operations in Kosovo, $1.6 billion to cover the Pentagon's soaring
fuel costs and $2.2 billion in flood relief for hurricane-ravaged
North Carolina farm communities.

That's $6.6 billion for real emergencies.

But other things, such as $75 million to begin construction of a Food
and Drug Administration lab in Los Angeles and $600 million to repair
roads and bridges, are not urgent. They should compete with other
needs in the normal budget process.

And the last big piece of the House bill -$1.6 billion in military aid
for Colombia-shouldn't be appropriated under any circumstances. It
would be a mistake for the United States to step up involvement in
Colombia's 40-year war with leftist insurgents and drug traffickers,
when right-wing paramilitaries in cahoots with the government are also
in bed with drug traffickers.

Congress should just say no to emergency appropriations for things
that are not true emergencies.