No More Dung Beetle Legislating!

During the odious Senate reign of Harry Reid (D-NV), the normal processes for budgeting and appropriations were effectively terminated. Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND), then chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, once opened hearings on the next federal budget, apparently out of some weird, archaic adherence to law, process and procedure. His Majority Leader promptly ordered it shut down.

Continuing resolutions, omnibus bills and absurdly disparate collections of provisions (recall Nancy Pelosi’s infamous remark that her health care bill had to be passed before we could see what was in it) seem to be the norm. The dung beetle paradigm of rolling many things into one big ball is how we are governed. It takes a lot for a single issue or event to get meaningful attention.

I would mind less about funds going to Peruvian LGBTQ comic books or to travelling non-binary street puppet climate theater troupes if such expenditures were actually expressly listed in the authorizing legislation and we could see who actually voted for it.

In the current system, as the USAID scandal shows, the congressional methodology is such that even if controversial items are listed, (a) the sheer size of spending bills will hold hostage legitimate items and (b) we don’t even see a record of many dubious expenditures because they come out of large slush pots (e.g., USAID) for generalized purposes. Those kinds of untethered appropriations are like ringing the dinner bell for the Beltway grifter class.

I have heard more than one member of Congress over the years say that their eyes glaze over when there is a discussion of whether an aircraft carrier should cost $10 billion or $20 billion — who, in their prior professional or educational experience, ever developed some reference point for the correct price for an F-15 or missile frigate? But members do have an idea about what it should cost to build a building or hire 200 people or other more conventional expenditures if they were permitted or required to do such analyses over far more of the budget.

A senior senate aide once did me a favor by taking a meeting with my clients. As we were wrapping up, he got a call and apologized for having to leave abruptly. The issue of the location and size of a new federal court and office facility in his home state was about to come up in committee, and his boss needed his assistance. He laughingly said there were probably more re-election votes at stake over this issue than the environment, taxes and foreign policy combined. (I approve of respecting the actual priorities of the folks back home and not the wishes of some NGOs fronting for rentier radicals and very wealthy perverts.)

On the one hand, I welcome a new AI-driven era in which all spending becomes transparent to force our elected officials to assert more control and reduce wasteful practices, cronyism and ideological grift. On the other hand, pet projects and grift are bipartisan undertakings, and the GOP majorities in Congress are pretty slim. So GOP members can more easily hold hostage large bills to preserve less worthy projects.

That kind of hostage-taking would be harder to do if the heavy lifting and details were pushed back to the committee and subcommittee levels for far more focused and specific work to make it less common for rather questionable items to be buried in paragraph thirteen on page 1,056 of the Omnibus Fairness, Health, American Motherhood and Justice Act of 2025.

Normal order and process can be our friend.

I am also in favor of giving each member of Congress an express pork allocation and demand that no more be inserted in other legislation. But that is a separate fun topic.