Cuts for Katrina

OpinionJournal editorilalized Recently we suggested that cancellation of $25 billion in pork projects--euphemistically known as "earmarks"--in the recently passed Highway Bill would be a good first step to offset some of the cost of rebuilding the infrastructure in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast.

I am not in favor of doing all of the rebuilding that some are calling for in New Orleans (for example I dont think a penny should be spent to rebuild levees to protect an area that is 7 to 15 feet below sea level), I do like the idea of reducing the pork from not only the highway bill but all other such bills. And before someone says I am insensitive to the poor people in the Ninth Ward, I am not. I just dont think they should move back there. Those houses are destroyed, and even if he levees are rebuilt high enough to protect from a Cat 5 storm, if such a storm hits New Orleans again the rainfall alone will cause the "bowl" to flood. I like Bush's proposal to give them free land in the form of a homestead on federal land, either in Louisiana, or elsewhere in the country, if they will either get a morgage to build a house on it, or persuade a chairity like Habitat for Humanities to build them a house on the land.

But thankfully, a grassroots Internet campaign and a handful of House GOP conservatives have refused to give up on the idea that spending cuts should be found to defray the estimated $200 billion federal price tag for hurricane relief. In the Senate, John McCain is proposing a similar pork-for-Katrina swap.

Go for it.

The Internet campaign picks up on the idea of revisiting the earmarks in the Highway Bill. A Web site called Porkbusters helpfully lists these projects by state and directs readers to the appropriate Representatives and Senators to ask what they would cut. Around the country a flood of letters to local newspapers has echoed the theme.

And if revisiting the Highway Bill is too much to ask, how about a one-year moratorium on all non-defense earmarks for fiscal 2006?

That is a very good idea. A better idea would be a ten-year moratorium, and the best idea would be to make earmarks illegal.

Rep. Ron Lewis (R., Kentucky) proposes just that in a "Dear Colleague" letter dated Monday. Other suggestions include across-the-board spending cuts at federal agencies of 2.5 cents on the dollar and delaying the introduction of the Medicare drug benefit by a year. Last week members of the House Republican Study Committee--led by consistent spending hawks such as Mike Pence, Jeb Hensarling and Jeff Flake--announced "Operation Offset" and a list of specific options to find savings in the budget.

White House flacks have been sending out emails claiming the new spending is mandated by a 1988 law called the Stafford Act.

If that is true, then amend the Stafford Act.

But the idea that somehow the government is on automatic pilot and that expenditures cannot be restrained by Congress or the President is irresponsible and even insidious. It is a basic principle of Constitutional law that no Congress can mandate expenditures by a future one. And while the Stafford Act does suggest that temporary infrastructure repair after major disasters is a federal responsibility, it does not justify why 41 states should receive Katrina aid and it certainly doesn't relieve Republicans of their fiscal duty to identify offsetting cuts.

And note that it is only "temporary infrastructure repair". It is not permanent repair, and it certainly is not a requirement to change a levee system designed for Cat 3 storm into one to protect from a Cat 5 storm.