#AbolishConfidentialFunds
The speed by which the budgets of the Office of the President and Office of the Vice President were passed points to a grotesque kind of fiscal impunity aimed at avoiding any meaningful public scrutiny of confidential and intelligence funds. What is happening in Congress now makes us even more convinced that all confidential and intelligence funds should be abolished.
Parliamentary courtesy has been abused in order to justify utter lack of transparency in the budget process. There is overflowing courtesy for elected officials but zero courtesy for the taxpayers who pay for the budgets of these officials.
The confidential and intelligence funds are lump-sum appropriations that have escaped public examination as to their purpose and use. These funds apparently can be transferred from one office to another even without any line item in the national budget, long after the budget has been enacted. These funds can also be used for any expenditure under the sun, not related to their original purpose. Simply put, these funds constitute “executive pork” which are discretionary in nature.
The public should call for the complete abolition of these lump-sum appropriations. We demand that these items be deleted from the national budget. In a time of severe economic crisis and rising public debt, there is no room for billions of confidential and intelligence funds in the GAA.
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