 When the potential cost
of all spending legislation introduced by Nevada's
senators in the previous two sessions of the 104th
Congress are calculated, says the NTU, Nevada had the
fifth least frugal delegation, proposing less spending
only than the delegations from Massachusetts, West
Virginia, South Carolina and Illinois.
Each year since 1991 the NTU has reported the
findings of its "BillTally" system, a
computerized accounting of the cost of all spending
legislation before Congress.
Totals for all senators, say the taxpayer
group, are developed by cross-indexing their sponsorship
and co-sponsorship records with independent, third-party
cost estimates. During the last congress that covered 346
Senate bills introduced through February 29, 1996, and
cosponsored through April 16, 1996.
The dollar totals are net, after senators'
proposed spending reductions have also been figured in,
said NTU, and do not double-count overlapping proposals.
Members of Congress were given four weeks to
confidentially review and comment on the completeness and
accuracy of the data.
|
The
effect of legislation introduced by Reid, during the
104th, would have been a net increase in federal spending
of $4,681 billion, said the NTU report, which the net
increase in spending derived from Bryan bills would have
been $508 million.
According to the taxpayer group, Reid wanted
to spend more than 90 percent of the other senators,
while Bryan wanted to spend more than 76 percent of the
other members.
Although Reid sponsored legislation which
would have reduced government spending by $3.54 billion,
he also sponsored bills which would have cost a total of
$8.22 billion. Bryan would have cut spending by about
$6.11 billion, while raising it about $6.62 billion.
Nevada's senior senator already has a head
start on another spendthrift designation from NTU for the
$105th Congress, which began last month.
Although the taxpayer group has opposed the
creation of "off-budget" funds, saying such
actions "make it more difficult to balance the
budget, control spending, or effectively set spending
priorities," Senator Reid on Wednesday, Feb. 5
introduced legislation to take the
|