I've previously cited the Mercatus Center's Veronique de Rugy and her excellent studies on various budget issues. Her working paper entitled "Budget Gimmicks or the Destructive Art of Creative Accounting" is no exception. The 17-page paper discusses the consequences that emerge when lawmakers use procedural tricks to bypass the formal budget process and mask true costs of legislation. De Rugy says these budget gimmicks lead to "more spending, more deficits, and more debt." We wholeheartedly agree.
De Rugy goes on to describe the rising use (or abuse) of supplemental spending deemed as "emergency" spending:
"Part of the budgetary process since the first U.S. Congress, supplemental appropriations are supposed to fund programs that cannot wait until the next appropriations cycle or that have very recently enacted authorizations. Originally, the president and Congress used supplemental bills to cover unexpected costs due to natural disasters or war."
"Furthermore, supplemental bills given an 'emergency' designation avoid certain budgetary rules, making them even easier to approve. For instance, emergency bills do not count against House and Senate budget caps; Congress and the president can use them to increase the level of discretionary spending without having to cut spending elsewhere in the budget."
The problem is that supplemental budget requests retain significant flexibility (i.e. little accountability), which makes it easier to pass pet projects that would not otherwise be approved with "normal" Congressional oversight. According to de Rugy, federal lawmakers have implemented between one and eight supplemental spending bills, ranging from $1.3 billion to $120 billion, over the last 2.5 decades. Supplemental spending as a portion of total budget authority has also increased over this same period, from 0.1% in FY 1988 to 6.2% in FY 2005. The first chart in her paper does a great job of depicting this dramatic hike.
For too long, Congress has abused the supplemental spending process to heap piles of spending onto the backs of overburdened taxpayers. Real emergencies are inevitable and it's imperative that our senators and representatives account for them when planning expenditures and set aside funding accordingly.