Politico reports: ” Congress is on the verge of giving itself a bump in its annual budget — even as local governments, families and businesses across the country are tightening their belts in the worst recession in decades.”
Spending on the legislative branch of the federal government is set to rise 5.8 percent in fiscal 2010, and Politico details some of the dubious activities that will receive increased funding.
One statement in the story particularly caught my eye:
” ‘We have not seen a significant increase in overall legislative branch expenditures since nearly 2001,’ said Jonathan Beeton, a spokesman for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D‑Fla.).”
Who is he trying to fool? The bill under consideration will provide $4.7 billion in funding for Congress in 2010, which is way up from the $2.7 billion spent in 2001, according to the Congressional Research Service (page 3).
That’s a 74 percent increase in nine years, representing a very robust 6.4 percent annual average growth rate.
And consider that the “customer base” for this spending has not increased–the number of members of Congress has remained fixed at 535. So while supporters of, say, an education program may say that spending needs to rise because the number of students is rising, much of the increased spending on the legislative branch would seem to go directly into fattening the paychecks of politicians and their staffers.
