Assessing Biden's $100 Billion Emergency Supplemental Request

Smart politicking, bad budgeting

Below are highlights from my blog post titled “Emergency Aid or Budget Trick? Assessing Biden's $100 Billion Spending Request” which appeared in Cato at Liberty on October 20, 2023.

Photo by Taylor Brandon on Unsplash

The Biden administration is asking for a $100 billion supplemental spending package for Israel, Ukraine, Indo-Pacific allies, border security, and more. That’s more money than the Department of State, Department of Labor, or Environmental Protection Agency received in funding this year. This legislation would evade spending limits agreed to back in May and spend future taxpayer money that is not necessarily in U.S. interests. By tying together more than a dozen separate issues, this request uses an all-or-nothing approach.

Congress should reject tying together fundamentally unrelated priorities and consider the Israel emergency request as a standalone. If Ukraine, Indo-Pacific allies, border security, or any other issue merits additional funding, they should be considered as part of the ongoing appropriations process.

Any new emergency funding should be heavily scrutinized because it bypasses the normal budget process and faces less oversight. Congress has a bad habit of using emergency designations in supplementals to evade spending limits and avoid the trade-off considerations involved in good budgeting.

Excessive emergency spending reduces oversight at the expense of the taxpayer. To address this broader problem, Congress should consider adopting emergency accounts and offset today's emergency spending with future spending reductions to avoid further adding to the already excessive federal debt.

Emergency funding should be used only for priorities that are vital, sudden, urgent, unforeseen, and non-permanent. Taking the most charitable reading of Biden’s proposed funding, questions need to be raised about whether the current situations with Ukraine, the Indo-Pacific, and the border qualify as unforeseen, sudden, and non-permanent. There is no reason that these issues cannot be integrated into the regular budget. At best, only Israel meets these criteria. Even then, the United States already sends billions in military aid to Israel every year. 

There is no doubt that Biden’s supplemental request is smart politicking. Nonetheless, hostage-taking key foreign policy issues in a massive supplemental spending request is bad budgeting and promotes bad strategy. The last two decades are replete with examples of well-intentioned alternate funding paths (read: slush funds) becoming budgetary and strategic nightmares. Accordingly, Congress should consider the issues the administration highlights separately and, wherever possible and necessary, incorporate this spending as part of a base budget that reflects U.S. national priorities.