Report: Congress authorized $15 trillion in 'emergency' deficit spending since 1991

(The Center Square) – Over the past 35 years, Congress has used emergency funding rules to bypass budget controls and spend a cumulative $15 trillion, a new analysis reveals.

That sum, financed almost entirely through deficit spending, roughly equals the money spent on Medicaid and veterans programs combined from 1991 to 2025.

“What happens when there's an emergency, because there's so little oversight of this process, everyone will get their little piece of the pie, and [lawmakers] will add things that don’t need emergency funding,” Dominick Lett, a Cato Institute budget policy analyst and author of the report , told The Center Square. “That leads to waste and further weakens the U.S.”

On paper, there are measures in place meant to prevent Congress from overspending. Federal budget