We often hear how Congress has the power of the purse strings. Well, when it comes to an abusive U.S. Department of Justice with a budget growing by leaps and bounds, the purse strings need to be tightened considerably.
Last year, Congress wisely decided to deny the Clinton Administration's request for $20 million to fund a lawsuit brought against tobacco firms under the guise of trying to recoup Medicare and veterans' health service costs tied to tobacco-related illnesses. Of course, in reality, this lawsuit is nothing but a government money grab from an industry deemed to be politically incorrect. After all, if you set up a program like Medicare, it's pretty obvious that the government is going to incur costs related to smoking illnesses. The Clinton Administration simply failed to get its draconian tobacco tax increase passed, so it resorted to taxation through litigation.
Last year, Attorney General Janet Reno financed the tobacco lawsuit with funds from Justice's regular budget and from other agencies supposedly affected by the litigation. On Monday (June 19), the House of Representatives voted to bar the Department of Veterans Affairs from contributing $4 million this coming year to Justice for lawsuit costs. However, that vote was reversed the following day. Meanwhile, the Senate reportedly has legislative language blocking lawsuit funding.
Clearly, a Department of Justice instigating lawsuits against legal U.S. businesses-not to mention unleashing an activist antitrust division to attack mergers and some of our most successful businesses (for example, see the Microsoft antitrust case)-deserves to have its budget cut deeply and all avenues to make an end run around Congress closed off.
The Clinton budget for fiscal year 2001 proposes that agency outlays for the Department of Justice increase from $18.5 billion in 2000 to $22.4 billion-a whopping 21 percent increase. During the Clinton years then, Justice's budget would have more than doubled from $10.1 billion in 1993. Instead, deep cuts are in order to rein in this dangerous department. How about a rollback to the pre-Clinton days of $10.1 billion?
