March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Cost of lawmaker proposals examined > Maine delegation ranks in middle

WASHINGTON — During election campaigns, members of Congress often portray themselves as opponents of deficit government spending. A new computer analysis of the 2,061 bills written by lawmakers during the 1991-92 legislative session would seem to debunk such claims.

The National Taxpayers Union Foundation, a non-partisan government watchdog group, released a report Wednesday concluding that members Congress proposed spending increases totaling $11 for every $1 in deficit-reduction legislation during the recently concluded session.

David Keating, NTUF president, said that President-elect Clinton would be strongly challenged to deliver on his own campaign promise to halve the federal deficit because of the “alarming … dysfunctional legislature culture” confronting him on Capitol Hill. By and large, Keating said, the longer a politician serves in Congress, the more likely he is to vote for programs that expand the federal deficit. A constitutional limit on the number of years members can serve in Washington, he said, might be the most effective remedy for run-away government deficits.

The good news for Clinton, according to NTUF, is that the two members of Congress named to the president-elect’s Cabinet — Sen. Lloyd Bentsen as treasury secretary and Rep. Leon Panetta as head of the Office of Management and Budget — were deficit hawks, proposing combined spending cuts totaling $885 million.

With the exception of freshman Rep. Tom Andrews, Maine lawmakers ranked in the middle, or bottom tier in NTUF’s ranking of “big deficit spenders.” As a group, the state’s four members wrote proposals that would have increased the federal deficit by $311 billion, had all the bills been enacted into law. Overall, the 535 members of Congress put their names on spending bills totaling $4.83 trillion, while sponsoring bills to reduce the deficit by only $448 billion.

Sen. William S. Cohen, who sponsored 40 spending bills, and Rep. Olympia J. Snowe, who introduced 60 bills that affected the budget, were the most frugal state lawmakers, according to NTUF. Cohen wrote legislation that would have increased spending by $9.8 billion, but also sponsored bills to reduce the budget by $443 million, for a net total of $9.4 billion.

Seventy-two of the 100 senators compiled higher deficit totals.

Snowe’s legislative proposals would have raised spending by $16.9 billion. Her budget reduction bills totaled $3 billion, for a net total of $13.8 billion. Two hundred eighty-seven members of the 435-member House of Representatives compiled higher deficit totals, NTUF indicated.

Majority Leader George J. Mitchell was close to the middle of the Senate pack, NTUF said. He introduced 43 bills that would have raised federal spending by $27.5 billion, while cutting the deficit by $41 million. Thirty-nine members of the Senate compiled higher deficit totals.

Andrews introduced 58 bills affecting the budget, the highest total among Maine lawmakers. According to NTUF, bills written or co-sponsored by Andrews would have increased federal spending by $268.8 billion, while reducing the deficit by $8.3 billion, for a net deficit total of $260.5 billion. Only 71 of the 435 House members sponsored legislation with a larger deficit total, NTUF said.

Aides to Maine’s congressional delegation were mostly critical of the study. Dennis Bailey, Andrews’ press secretary, pointed out that the largest so-called budget-buster bills for all members of Congress were proposals to reform the nation’s health insurance system.

NTUF said that a health care reform bill written by Andrews would increase federal spending by $236 billion, which accounted for 90 percent of the lawmaker’s NTUF deficit total. Mitchell’s health insurance reform bill accounted for 63 percent of his deficit total. According to NTUF, 237 separate health care reform bills were introduced during the past legislative sessions, carrying an average annual price tag of $15.2 billion.

“We dispute their analysis. The whole point of health care reform is to cut costs and save money. They don’t take into account the cost-control and cost-cutting aspects of our bill,” Bailey said. “All they do is punish anybody who has sponsored health care reform legislation.”

The NTUF analysis, Cohen said, “does not reflect … my efforts to cut the B-2 bomber program, which would save $55 billion over 30 years, or a number of money-saving votes I cast last year. These include my vote to cancel the space station, which would save $110 billion over 30 years, and my vote to terminate the superconducting supercollider, which would cost $10 billion to build.” That’s because NTUF’s analysis focused entirely on bills written by members of Congress, not votes cast during floor debate.

Despite that, Cohen pointed to the NTUF analysis as proof that he has continued to consider “cost as a factor” in proposing new legislation.

In the past, Mitchell has voiced criticism of the NTUF cost analysis of congressional bills and disputed the group’s estimates of the budget impact of his health insurance reform bill. David Bragdon, the senator’s press secretary, said that Mitchell had not seen the new study.

Bill Pierce, Snowe’s press secretary, said Snowe’s ranking “in roughly the bottom third of members of Congress was consistent with what she has done with past legislation.”


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