Good morning. This is the third in a series of hearings we have been holding on the workings of the Senate. Today, we are going to examine unauthorized spending and earmarks, what some call pork. And in this case, both the Senate and the House engage in these activities.

Like much else about Congress, the process of how we spend the taxpayers’ money is not well understood by almost all Americans. It is especially byzantine. The majority of spending, 64 percent, is automatic–whatever the financial demand, the program will pay out. These are the entitlements–Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are the biggest ones. Add in interest on the national debt and you have nearly $1.4 trillion in spending that is on automatic pilot.

The remaining $800 billion is what we refer to as discretionary spending–spending for the military and all the civilian departments of government, including environmental protection, education, law enforcement, to name just a few. And it is in this area that the issues of unauthorized spending and earmarks arise.

The average person would logically ask the question: How can there be unauthorized spending if Congress passes a law funding a program? The answer is that we have a two-step process to address matters of public policy. We have committees known as authorizing committees that create or authorize programs and we have an appropriations committee that attempts to fund programs the authorizers create. The former Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Mark Hatfield, once commented that an authorization “is only a hunting license for an appropriation.”

Too often, authorizations expire and the Committee of jurisdiction fails to re-authorize the program. Theoretically, without a reauthorization, the program should die. Unfortunately, some of these programs are just too big to die. I will name a few: the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

I have here, a 49 page report that lists hundreds of federal programs that should have died because the authorizing committees failed to do their jobs.

But those programs and agencies survived because the appropriations committees continued to fund them.

Everyone understands what an earmark, or what some deride as pork, is. Every Senator is visited by constituents who are seeking funding for a project in the state. It may be $5 million to dredge a harbor back home, or $1 million to fund a unique research program at the state university. And none of these programs are approved by the authorizers. We have seen a veritable explosion of this type of earmarked spending. One estimate puts it at nearly $45 billion. Put in perspective, that’s about 5.5 percent of discretionary spending or 2 percent of all federal spending.

Senator McCain has been tireless in his fight against these earmarks. He has proposed to change Senate rules so that all unauthorized spending and earmarks would be subject to a 60 vote point of order.

I think the Senator’s resolution is well intended. It should send a message to the authorizers that they are not doing their jobs because year after year the appropriators take on the responsibility of continuing to fund important agencies and programs. I think a major reason the authorizers have been slipping in reauthorizations is because Congress expends far too much time on the annual budget process. This is another reason that I believe we should go to biennial budgeting.

There is a very serious flaw, however, in this proposal that triggers very important balance of power issues. A program or an earmark would not be considered unauthorized if the President included the proposal in his budget submission. Thus, if the President’s budget requested $5 million to dredge Oceans Springs harbor in Mississippi, an appropriation for that project would be considered authorized. But if the President did not include that project in his budget and a Mississippi constituent asked Thad Cochran to include it in an appropriations bill, it would be deemed unauthorized.

The Constitution places responsibility for determining how money is spent in the Congress, not in the President. By deeming a program authorized if the President proposes it, we are essentially eviscerating the authority of the authorization committees and the Congress itself.

This proposal, in many ways, mirrors the line item veto. That measure, which was ruled unconstitutional, essentially gave the President veto power over individual spending projects. This proposal, by lodging authorization power in the President, shifts authority over individual spending projects from Congress to the President.

A President who is seeking to pressure a Senator to support a program could use the threat of withholding one of the Senator’s important state projects from being included in his budget. A President of one party could use this authority to diminish the legislative stature of a Senator from the other party.

This represents a radical shift of power under our Constitution and needs to be very carefully considered. I look forward to exploring this issue and many others during this hearing.

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