Tax Extenders Act Of 2009

Floor Speech

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Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I have offered an amendment to take a small step toward addressing the growing problem of the Federal deficits. The underlying bill we are considering would extend many vitally important programs, including various tax provisions, unemployment benefits, COBRA health benefits, and other provisions to help the millions of Americans who have lost jobs or who are struggling in this economy to get back on their feet again. While I support these provisions, I am disappointed the bill is not fully paid for. My amendment will not cover the whole cost of the bill, but it will make a small dent as we try to get our financial house in order and make the tough choices to avoid hamstringing future generations with this debt.

There is no single or easy solution to the massive deficits we face, but one thing we should be doing is taking a hard look at the Federal budget for wasteful or unnecessary spending. Hard-working American families have to make these kinds of decisions every week to make ends meet, whether it is skipping a trip to the movies or clipping coupons or paying attention to the sale ads. But in the end, by cobbling together a series of small actions, they try to get their budget back in line. I think we in Congress should be doing the same thing.

My proposal to rescind old, unwanted transportation earmarks would bring down our deficit by a modest sum by Washington, DC, standards--around $600 million and perhaps a few billion dollars over time. But this is real money back in Wisconsin and one step on a path that is going to have to include many additional cuts.

I have put together a number of proposals for where we should begin tightening our belt, including the one for this amendment in a piece of legislation I introduced last fall called the Control Spending Now Act. The combined bill would cut the Federal deficit by about $ 1/2 trillion over 10 years.

This amendment that is before us now would build off a proposal put forward in President George W. Bush's fiscal year 2009 budget proposal to rescind $226 million in highway earmarks that were over a decade old and still had less than 10 percent of the funding utilized. Transportation Weekly did an analysis of these earmarks at the time. They found that over 60 percent of the funding--$389 million--was in 152 earmarks that had no funding spent or obligated from them. These clearly are either unwanted or a low priority for the designated recipients. This is nothing against transportation funding either. I fully realize the need for investment in our crumbling infrastructure and its potential for job creation in hard-hit segments such as construction, but having hundreds of millions of dollars sit untouched in an account at the Department of Transportation does nothing to address our infrastructure needs and it does nothing to put people back to work.

So what I have done is build on President Bush's concept a little. My amendment expands this rescission to all transportation earmarks that are over 10 years old with unobligated balances of more than 90 percent. At a hearing recently before the Budget Committee, I asked Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood about these unwanted and unspent earmarks and whether he supported my proposal to rescind them. Secretary LaHood responded:

The answer is, yes, we are supportive of your proposal, and we have identified significant millions of dollars' worth of earmarks.

It is unclear exactly how many hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars could be saved by this proposal being expanded to other transportation earmarks in addition to the previous estimate of $626 million that would be rescinded from unwanted highway earmarks in the first year. This proposal would also be permanent so there would likely be additional savings as the unwanted earmarks in the most recent highway bill reach their 10-year anniversary.

I think this is a very modest proposal, going after just the lowest of the low-hanging fruit, and I would support going even further to make it cover all Federal agencies. But with the uncertainty about how many of these unwanted and unspent earmarks there might be across the whole Federal Government, my amendment simply requires an annual report by the OMB to collect information from each agency and include recommendations on whether these other unobligated earmarks should also be rescinded.

So as my colleagues can see, there is bipartisan support from the last two
administrations for this proposal, and there is bipartisan support in this Senate for this amendment. This shouldn't be a hard decision, and I hope to have more strong bipartisan support in the Senate. If we can't agree to take old earmarks that no one wants and use the money to pay down the deficit, then how are we ever going to get our fiscal house in order?

I yield the floor, and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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