Enzi Criticizes Vote to Maintain ‘Slush Fund’

Wyoming Senator Mike Enzi says the U.S. Senate sent the wrong message to taxpayers on Tuesday when it voted to maintain a Senate ''working group" that Enzi says does little  beyond supplementing staff salary budgets.

The Wyoming Republican joined 43 other senators in voting against funding the Senate's National Security Working Group at a cost of $700,000 a year. Enzi calls the funding for the group a "slush fund", adding that it rarely meets and produces little in the way of real work.

Despite that, he says the group.s leaders and administrative co-chairs receive $100,000 annually in supplemental salary funding for their offices, and receive another $60,000 each for themselves. The amendment to strike funding for the group, offered by Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul, was defeated by a vote of 53-44.