Washington just can’t stop.  On Tuesday, the House approved $26.1 billion in “emergency assistance” for state education and Medicaid programs.  The Senate passed the same legislation last week.  The 247-161 House vote is another sign that Congress still hasn’t come around to the need to rein in government spending.  Always just one more bill…

Last year, Congressional leaders tried to sell the idea that they would be fiscally responsible by instituting self-enforced PAYGO rules, which requires that spending increases be offset with savings somewhere else.  But there’s an easy way to get out of paying (surprised?).  All Congress needs to do is declare the spending to be “emergency assistance,” and they can put it on the national tab for someone else to worry about.

Calling yesterday’s spending an “emergency” is a ruse.  While it’s clear that at least 247 politicians thought it was important enough to vote for, it’s simply disingenuous to declare it “emergency assistance” to flout the rules. 

In 1991, the Office of Management and Budget defined what type of spending should be considered an “emergency.”  It needs to have five characteristics: necessary, sudden, urgent, unforeseen and not permanent.  There is simply no way to argue that this state bailout was sudden or unforeseen.  The opposite is in fact true.  Many states were counting on another federal bailout – no doubt because Washington signaled it would be coming – and even wrote the revenue into their budgets months ago.  The only reason federal legislation took so long was that they needed to be able to claim an emergency that had to be solved quickly.