Policy Paper

For a more thorough discussion of the VoteTally methodology, please see Appendix C.

II. Analysis

This study uses 315 House votes and 344 Senate votes cast during the 108^th Congress.[3] Several Members have been excluded from the data set used for analysis due to resignation, low vote totals, or because they did not serve the entire Congress.[4] Appendix A lists Members alphabetically and Appendix B lists Members by state delegation.

A. Data Highlights

• The conclusion of the 108^th Congress marked the fourth consecutive year in which no Member of Congress had a net voting record that would have reduced overall outlays, excluding the growth in entitlement spending. The number of spending cutters peaked in 1996 during the 104^th Congress at 512 Members. See Chart 1 on page 8 for additional data.

• Over the course of the 108^th Congress, the average House Member supported $386.9 billion in additional net discretionary spending. This amount is up from $192.3 billion during the 107^th Congress (a 101 percent increase) and up 1,760 percent from the 105^th Congress where the average House voting agenda was just $20.8 billion.

• The rise in spending agendas among House Members is not all that surprising, as the support for spending cuts has fallen over time. Even though Members voted for more cuts when compared to the 107^th Congress, the average level of cuts has fallen substantially since 1997. During the 105^th Congress, the average House Member supported $40.2 billion in reductions, compared to $7.3 billion during the 108^th Congress.

• In 2003, the House voted against four amendments to reduce various appropriation bills by 1 percent each ($1.2 billion in total savings). In 2004, three such amendments were also defeated ($1.4 billion in estimated reductions).

• While the average Senator supported more new spending in absolute terms than the average Representative ($471.0 billion versus $386.9 billion), voting agendas have climbed more rapidly in the House (101 percent) than in the Senate (83 percent) between the 107^th and 108^th Congresses. Spending in the Senate is 873 percent higher than it was during the 105^th Congress (1997-1998), but as mentioned above, spending in the House rose 1,760 percent over the same period.

• After excluding votes that would either increase or decrease funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the average net House agenda fell from $386.9 billion to $342.2 billion. The average Senator's net voting agenda fell from $471.0 billion to $458.3 billion.

• During the two years of the 108^th Congress, the number of spending cut amendments offered in the House remained the same, but the dollar value of the reductions fell significantly. In 2003, the House considered 16 spending cuts totaling $13.8 billion. In 2004, the House again considered 16 amendments to reduce spending, but the total dollar value of those cuts dropped to $8.0 billion. The Senate, which considered six amendments totaling $40.3 billion in cuts during 2003, voted on just one worth $1.1 billion in savings during 2004.

• The House met for a combined 1,893 hours during the 108^th Congress. Based on the average Representative's net agenda, Members voted for $204 million in new spending for each hour that the House was in session. The Senate was in session for a total of 2,485 hours during 2003 and 2004. Using the average voting agenda for that chamber, the average Senator voted to increase spending by approximately $190 million per hour.

B. Missed Opportunities

Taxpayers might have hoped that the rhetoric of the Presidential campaign would inspire Congress to rally around a pro-taxpayer agenda that contained spending cuts and deficit reduction programs. To do so, however, would have required Members to make a rather abrupt about-face. After all, this was the Congress that passed a multi-billion dollar Medicare prescription drug bill in addition to a number of pork-laden appropriations bills in 2003. And while Members had options to reduce spending during 2004, they instead chose the opposite path. As the Foundation noted in its final BillTally report for the 108^th Congress, "NTUF analysts identified 1,343 House and 1,040 Senate measures to increase spending. This is the highest number of spending bills introduced in a Congress since the advent of the BillTally tracking program."[5] There were just 63 bills to cut spending introduced in the House. Only 35 were sponsored in the Senate. If Members had brought just one of the largest spending cut bills to the floor for a vote, their net spending agendas could have fallen anywhere from $8.0 to $36.5 billion in the House and by $900 million to $36.5 billion in the Senate. Again, Congress seems to have missed an opportunity to curtail spending and restore some sense of fiscal responsibility to the federal budget. Table 1 highlights the five largest spending cut bills in each chamber.

Rather than using the bills contained in Table 1, below, to cut spending, Congressional leaders brought "must-pass" appropriations bills that increased outlays (and that were laden with special interest earmarks) to the floor for a vote. Members were also confronted with emergency supplementals that failed to contain spending offsets. In addition, party leaders decided to expand Medicare by passing a prescription drug plan that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. Congressman Jeff Flake (R-AZ) expressed the frustration of some rank-and-file Members who were looking to cut spending during the debate on the prescription drug bill when he said, "I hope that my opposition to this bill does not imply my support for the Democratic alternative. While we Republicans are surely headed off the fiscal cliff, the Democrats' plan would only get us there much faster."[6] The decision by the Congressional leadership not to allow votes on spending cut bills forced Members to try and cut spending through floor amendments – a much more difficult process.

During the 1^st Session of the 108^th Congress, the House considered 16 floor amendments that represented $13.8 billion in potential savings. The bulk of the cuts came from reductions in funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Senate voted on six amendments totaling $40.3 billion in cuts. Each chamber would subsequently adopt a single spending cut amendment. The House passed an amendment to cut the U.S. contribution to the U.N. population fund by $25 million, and the Senate agreed to language that converted a portion of Iraqi reconstruction funding from a grant to a loan.

Unfortunately for taxpayers, the passage of these amendments was an anomaly and did not represent the beginning of a cost-cutting trend. In 2004, the House again debated 16 spending cuts, the total dollar value of which slid to $8.0 billion. The House did pass three of the amendments for $16 million in savings. The Senate considered just one spending cut worth $1.1 billion. Tables 2 and 3 detail the spending cuts that were considered in each chamber.

Given Congress's failure to seize these spending cut opportunities, it is not surprising that spending agendas have skyrocketed in the last few years and that no Member of Congress has been able to achieve a voting agenda that would reduce discretionary outlays. Chart 1 shows a steep decline in the number of Members whose votes would cut spending.

During the 105^th Congress, the average Representative voted for $61.0 billion in new spending and supported $40.2 billion in spending cuts, for a net spending agenda of $20.8 billion. In contrast, the average Member of the House in the 108^th Congress voted for $394.2 billion in new spending, 546 percent more than in the 105^th, while support for spending cuts fell nearly 82 percent to $7.3 billion. Table 4 shows the steady move away from spending cuts in the House over the past eight years.

The House is not alone in its ever-increasing desire for more spending. The average Senator voted for $79.7 billion in new spending during the 105^th Congress. That figure ballooned to $485.3 billion, an increase of 509 percent, during the 108^th Congress. Again, the dearth of spending cuts has led net agendas to increase substantially in the Senate – albeit at a slower rate than in the House. In this past Congress, the average Senator's net discretionary total was $471.0 billion, an increase of 873 percent versus the 105^th Congress. The average Senate agenda was $256.9 billion in the 107^th Congress, an increase of 83 percent compared to the 105^th. Table 5 details changes in the Senate over the past four Congresses.

Tables 6 and 7 show that a bipartisan consensus to spend now exists in both chambers. Significant differences only seemed to appear among Senate Democrats and Republicans. Yet, even in this case, the "low" party's average nearly hit half a trillion dollars.

C. The Demise of Budget Reform

The lack of spending restraint and budgetary discipline in the 1^st Session of the 108^th Congress led to an impasse between the House and Senate during the 2^nd Session. Although the budget resolution is non-binding, a reconciled budget that has passed both chambers reduces the number of procedural obstacles for subsequent spending and tax bills. The reconciliation process is extremely useful when legislation is brought before the Senate, where 60 votes are needed to waive various budgetary rules to extend tax cuts.

Motivated by the impasse, a handful of Republicans in the House led an effort to reform the budget process. House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle (R-IA) brought H.R. 4663, the Spending Control Act of 2004, to the House floor for debate. The bill proposed to:

• Establish caps on discretionary budget authority through Fiscal Year 2006. If spending exceeded the caps, an across-the-board sequestration, or spending cut, would be required.
• The pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) concept that in the past required new spending or tax cuts to be offset with spending cuts or tax hikes would apply only to mandatory, or entitlement, spending – tax reductions would be exempt. A "limited sequestration" (or spending reduction set-aside) would be required if entitlement spending exceeded PAYGO limits.
• The discretionary spending caps would be adjusted to accommodate "emergency" spending items. The bill would require emergencies to be sudden, urgent, unforeseen, unpredictable, unanticipated, and temporary in nature. This provision was intended to prevent Members from designating any spending proposal as an emergency in an attempt to evade the spending caps. The decision to fund the 2000 Census as an emergency program is emblematic of this kind of fiscal game playing.

Not surprisingly, the bill was defeated. The vote was 146 in favor and 268 opposed.[7] The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board commented on the outcome of the debate by writing: "Once upon a time, in a Congress far, far away, Republicans believed in smaller government. But you sure wouldn't know it from last Friday's budget-reform fiasco on the House floor."[8]

While the legislation failed to gain any support from Democrats, it did not fare well among Republicans either. The ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee John M. Spratt, Jr. of South Carolina even took time to ridicule Republicans saying, "Our Republican friends control the House, they control the Senate, they control the White House. Why can't they control spending?"[9] The dismay expressed by the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board is explained by the 72 Republican votes against the measure – including almost every Republican member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee. Of the 35 Republican Appropriations Committee members present for the vote, only three backed the measure. The defeat of the bill provides some insight into just how difficult it is to advance a pro-taxpayer, anti-spending agenda in Congress.

D. Not Missing a Rhetorical Beat

Even though the budgetary rhetoric of the Presidential campaign could have been used as political cover to cut spending or reform the budget process in 2004, Congress decided against exercising the spending cut options that were available. This did not, however, preclude Members from taking the floor and lamenting the lack of fiscal responsibility in Washington. Table 8 contains the results of an electronic search of the Congressional Record that shows Members raised the din of their oratory even as they voted for more spending and rejected spending cut amendments. Since net spending increased, on average, by 101 percent in the House and by 83 percent in the Senate from the 107^th Congress, it is reasonable to conclude that these frequent calls for budgetary austerity fell on deaf ears.

E. Opportunities for the Future

Many of Washington's newest deficit hawks argue that tax cuts have wiped out projected budget surpluses and put a stranglehold on revenues. They see the opportunity to repeal the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 as the way to restore fiscal responsibility and increase spending on essential government programs. These economically beneficial tax cuts remain vulnerable to repeal because of increased spending.

The current deficits, if not corrected quickly, will mean higher taxes on Americans than would have otherwise been the case, and the deficits will prevent Congress from dealing with the nation's looming entitlement crisis. As Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute told The Wall Street Journal, "If you want the efficiency of smaller government, you have to have smaller expenditures and smaller taxes at the same time."[10] By failing to bring down expenditures, the President and Congress are putting taxpayers on the road to higher taxes and lower economic growth in the future. Congressman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) has observed correctly that, "The deficit is a symptom; spending is the disease. And we have to do something about the disease."[11]

In 1997, Congress achieved a measure of budgetary savings by slowing the growth of Medicare and Medicaid. In 2003, Members dramatically expanded Medicare spending by adding a prescription drug benefit to the program. Now, in the 109^th Congress, efforts are again under-way to bring entitlement spending back under control. The FY 2006 budget resolution intends to slow the growth of mandatory programs from 5.7 percent to 5.6 percent over the next five years.

While this represents a first step toward restraining spending, policymakers may be forced to consider additional options as well. Adopting the budget process reforms contained in H.R. 4663 would help establish a viable framework for reducing the deficit and preserving tax cuts. Then fiscal conservatives – veterans as well as newcomers – could press for the passage of Constitutional amendments that require a balanced budget and that limit the ability of Congress to raise taxes without a "super-majority" roll call vote. Finally, Congress could pass fundamental tax reform that moves the U.S. from an income-based tax system to a consumption-based tax system. If taxpayers can see – and feel – the burden of government, it will be far easier to permanently control the growth in government spending and provide a platform for long-term economic growth.

III. Conclusion

When Members of Congress had the opportunity to increase spending in 2003, they took it. When Members of Congress had the opportunity to reform the budget process and cut spending in 2004, they passed and wasted the political cover offered by the Presidential election. Taxpayers are left with the hope that Congress will realize the need for true fiscal reform and adopt a pro-taxpayer agenda. If not, the 109^th Congress may turn out to be yet another missed opportunity.

Jeff Dircksen
Director of Congressional Analysis