Washington, D.C. – The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) today urged Congress to uphold President George W. Bush’s veto of H.R. 1495, the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) of 2007.  This bill, which began as a $4.9 billion authorization bill, swelled to a grossly inflated $23 billion in the hands of pork-barreling lawmakers, who loaded it with 450 pork-barrel projects.  President Bush’s veto message asked Congress to send him “a fiscally responsible bill that sets priorities.” 

“We hope that taxpayers are paying close attention.  Once again Congress is using legislation as an excuse to spend money like drunken sailors,” said CCAGW President Tom Schatz.  “The distribution of earmarks in WRDA bears little relation to national priorities.  Instead, this behemoth represents the triumph of raw political power, seniority, and petty brinksmanship over the best interests of the taxpayers and fiscal sanity.  If this Congress wanted to demonstrate its commitment to fiscal prudence and rational governance, it would sustain the President’s veto.” 

The spending levels in H.R. 1495 are excessive. The final conference report of $23 billion was far more than the $14 billion and $15 billion price tags the Senate and House recommended in each of their respective bills and $18.1 billion more than the president requested.  The final bill includes several pork projects that are outside of the mission of the Corps of Engineers, transfers billions of dollars in costs from non-federal projects to taxpayers, and adds to the backlog of projects already in the pipeline.

The conference report also contained numerous pork-barrel projects which were “air-dropped” in at the last minute, well after the House and Senate had voted on their respective versions.  Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) attempted to challenge $2 billion worth of earmarks that were added in conference, but was rebuffed because Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) interpretation of the new transparency and accountability rules permits senators to add pork with impunity to authorization bills such as WRDA.

Congress is expected to overturn the veto, as the legislation originally passed with veto-proof majorities of 81-12 in the Senate and 381-40 in the House.

The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste is the lobbying arm of Citizens Against Government Waste, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.