The Heritage Foundation is carrying a great article concerning an absurd proposal by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist that cuts every appropriation in the emergency defense and Katrina supplemental recently passed by the Senate by 13% in order to bring the appropriations bill down to President Bush’s budget goal:

According to CQ Today, Frist’s top budget aide, William Hoagland has proposed an across-the-board cut in the supplemental spending to bring the bill’s total cost into line with the President’s initial request and veto threat. Just cut everything by the same amount, it seems, and the bill will slide right under the President’s cap. It’s an easy way out and, as Hoagland pitches it, an easy way for Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert to reach common ground. The entire difference between the Senate’s bill and the President’s request could be traversed by a 13-or-so percent across-the-board cut.

But easy and simple aren’t necessarily good. Relative to the President’s request for emergency spending, an across-the-board cut would reduce funding for defense in the supplemental–money for our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq to meet needs that are the very purpose of this legislation–by $9.6 billion. An across-the-board cut would also chop $2.6 billion from funding to respond to the actual emergency of Hurricane Katrina. This ploy just highlights the terrible trade-offs that pork-barrel spending leads lawmakers to make.

So where’s the money going if not to our troops and to hurricane victims? There’s billions in farm subsidies when the industry is roaring along. The bill has a bit over $1 billion for the fisheries and seafood industries–classic corporate pork. There’s highway spending, social program spending, and all other manner of non-emergency spending. None of this stacks up to the needs of U.S. troops abroad and our fellow citizens hit so hard by Hurricane Katrina.

Instead of doing the fiscally responsible thing and cutting the pork from the emergency funding bill, Frist and his aides are actually throwing around the idea of cutting everything in the bill by a proportional amount. This included cutting funding for the bill’s primary purpose - to support the troops fighting in the Middle East and provide funding for Gulf Coast hurricane recovery.

Instead of offering leadership when it comes to cutting the pork, Senator Frist has played into the hands of liberal interests and has betrayed the conservative cause.