Highway Bill and Entitlement Spending

The President may veto his first bill soon. The reason? The Senate can't stop spending money. The Highway Bill, set to be voted on next week, is running 15 billion over its expected costs ($295 billion). The only Senator to speak forcefully on the matter was Senate Budget Committee Charman Judd Gregg (R-NH), who stated: "You have the problem of a Republican Senate running over a Republican president because we want to spend more money---or at least some members of the Senate do."

This is just another example in a long line of excess spending by Congress. The sad part of this matter is that the Highway Bill is not an entitlement and thus is something that Congress could control. The problem is that Congress is not willing to control spending in a time when the nation pays 7 percent of its fiscal budget in net interest payments. By 2015 that will increase to 10 percent.

If Congress can't control descretionary then how much faith can we place in them for fixing entitlements and/or the national debt? Do they have the stomach to cut Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, federal student loans, child nutrition programs, vocational rehabilitation, and crop subsidy programs (all are entitlement programs or entitlements in all but name only)? I doubt they do, but the fact remains that mandatory spending (entitlements) is already taking up over half the federal budget (54%) and is expected to grow to over 60 percent of the budget in 10 years.

The way out? Well Congress believes that the budget reconciliation process can force them to curb entitlement spending. As it stands, Congress has to cut $34.7 billion from the fiscal 2006 budget. I know for fiscal conservatives this may sound like a big win, but these savings only slow the growth of entitlement spending (in addition past reconciliation bills saved from 400 to 500 billion). What is needed is strong leadership on the issue of Medicare and Medicaid (the two biggest entitlement programs). Until the eligibility requirements are changed there will be no stopping the damage that these programs do to the federal budget (I must point out that one could raise fees for these programs as a means to cut costs). I hope somewhere in either political party there is a leader that can stand up and say something big needs to be done.