Economistmom has been taking on House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey (D-WI) over several things he said about deficit hawks and budgeteers in an August 2 National Journal interview.  The interview is good reading.

(Full disclosure: I used to write for nj.com and Troy Schneider, one of the other founders of CG&G, was one of NJ.com's founders and my editor.)

A little history might be helpful here.  Obey may be saying it more bluntly but he's not saying anything new: Appropriators have never really liked the budget committees, congressional budget process, or Congressional Budget Act. 

Before the budget act established the budget committees, appropriators thought that they were the ones who protected taxpayer dollars and saw the budget committees as a usurper.  That was one of the biggest reasons why the budget act assigned a number of seats on the budget committee to appropriations committee members.   Without that concession, the appropriations committee likely would have never agreed to the budget act and, because of its influence and power among other House members, that would have doomed the legislation.

But that's ancient history compared to the more recent (as in the past 20 years or so) problem that appropriators have had with the budget committees and budgeteers. 

Their feeling, which is hard to dispute, is that appropriations have had to be cut to make up for the automatic and legislated increases in mandatory spending.  It doesn't take much for an appropriator to tell you that appropriations, especially domestic programs, have been held comparatively steady while spending on entitlements and interest on the national debt has skyrocketed. They will just as quickly bristle if they hear someone say that the deficit is just a spending problem and that "discretionary" (that is, appropriations) is the main culprit.

The pay-as-you rules that were in place in the 1990s temporarily allowed these hard feelings to soften a bit.  PAYGO said that legislated increases in mandatory spending or decreases in revenues had to be offset with decreases in other mandatory spending and/or increases in revenues.  Appropriations were specifically excluded from this calculation.

Appropriators didn't like the enforcement mechanism that applied to them during this time -- annual caps on the amount they could spend -- but at least they didn't have to atone for the sins of others.

But the hard feelings returned and intensified at the start of George W. Bush administration, when PAYGO expired, deficits replaced surpluses and became an issue again, and the incoming White House blamed the problem on spending, and then didn't have the courage t take on entitlements.  It got worse when taxes were cut, the deficit and national debt ballooned, and the Bush administration decided that domestic discretionary spending was a tool of the devil.  Add to that big increases supported by the Bush administration in mandatory spending and Obey's remarks become much easier to appreciate.

So what's Obey really saying?

1.  Appropriations, especially for domestic programs, are not the major budget problem and budgeteers and deficit hawks should stop saying that.

2.  The budget is not going to be balanced by cutting domestic appropriations.

3.  The appropriations reductions already in place have had a substantial negative impact on the federal government's ability to do what people count on it to do.

4.  The further reductions in appropriations that some are demanding would have to happen in the face of a growing demand for increased government services and government activities that are more expensive to provide.

While I can't find much fault in any of these points, #s 3 and 4 are the two that really hit home.  It's hard not to agree with Obey in the face of the FEMA's increadibly poor performance with Hurricane's Katrina and Rita, the CDC's admitting that it didn't have the resources to plan for and deal with an possible outbreak of tuberculosis, the FAA saying that it hadn't had the resources to do the inspection of commercial planes that was necessary, the tragedy at Walter Reed, the CPSC's not having the inspectors needed to keep toys with lead-based paint from being imported to the U.S., the FDA not have the personnel to stop poisoned pet food from making it to store shelves, and the length o time it has taken FDA to deal with the salmonella outbreak.

All of these are funded by the appropriations committee.  That why trash talk is anything but unexpected.