GOP: Senate Spending Bill Contains Billions in Pork
Lady Liberty
that they can vote themselves both bread and circuses ...for a while." -
Robert Heinlein, Expanded Universe
A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which
debt he proposes to pay off with your money. -- G. GORDON LIDDY
"People who have turned the government into a looting machine need to be
replaced."
- Afghani Presidential Candidate Ashraf Ghani, 2009
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, - That
whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is
the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its
powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their
Safety and Happiness. ...
when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the
same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it
is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to
provide new Guards for their future security." - The Declaration of
Independence, July 4th, 1776.
GOP: Senate Spending Bill Contains Billions in Pork
Sunday, 13 Dec 2009 05:57 PM
WASHINGTON � The Senate on Sunday passed a $1.1 trillion spending bill
with increased budgets for vast areas of the federal government,
including health, education, law enforcement and veterans' programs.
The more-than-1,000-page package, one of the last essential chores of
Congress this year, passed 57-35 and now goes to President Barack Obama
for his signature.
The weekend action underlined the legislative crush faced by Congress as
it tries to wind up the year. After the vote, the Senate immediately
returned to the debate on health care legislation that has consumed its
time and energy for weeks. Senate Democrats hope to reach a consensus in
the coming days on Obama's chief domestic priority.
The spending bill combines six of the 12 annual appropriation bills for
the 2010 budget year that began Oct. 1. Obama has signed into law five
others.
The final one, a $626 billion defense bill, will be used as the base
bill for another catch-all package of measures that Congress must deal
with in the coming days. Those include action to raise the $12.1
trillion debt ceiling and proposals to stimulate the job market.
The spending bill passed Sunday includes $447 billion for departments'
operating budgets and about $650 billion in mandatory payments for
federal benefit programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. Those programs
under immediate control of Congress would see increases of about 10
percent.
The FBI gets $7.9 billion, a $680 million increase over 2009; the
Veterans Health Administration budget goes from $41 billion to $45.1
billion; and the National Institutes of Health receives $31 billion, a
$692 million increase.
All but three Democrats voted for the bill, while all but three
Republicans opposed it. Democrats said the spending was critical to meet
the needs of a recession-battered economy. "Every bill that is passed,
every project that is funded and every job that is created helps America
take another step forward on the road of economic recovery," Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said after the vote.
Republicans decried what they called out-of control spending and pointed
to an estimated $3.9 billion in the bill for more than 5,000 local
projects sought by individual lawmakers from both parties.
The Citizens Against Government Waste said those projects included
construction of a county farmer's market in Kentucky, renovation of a
historic theater in New York and restoration of a mill in Rhode Island.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a longtime critic of such projects, said it
was "shameful" that so many had found their way into the legislation.
Most Americans, he said, were watching football and not the Senate
debate, adding, "If they knew what we are about to pass ...."
The legislation also contains numerous items not directly related to
spending. It provides help for auto dealers facing closure, ends a ban
on funding by the District of Columbia government for abortions and
allows the district to permit medical marijuana, lets Amtrak passengers
carry unloaded handguns in their checked baggage and permits detainees
held at Guantanamo Bay to be transferred to the United States to stand
trial, but not to be released.
The bill also approves a 2 percent pay increase for federal workers.
With the Senate concentrating on health care, attention on the upcoming
jobs plan shifts to the House.
The defense bill that will be the basis for the package normally enjoys
wide bipartisan support, but Republicans, and some fiscally conservative
Democrats, are unhappy with the prospect of another jolt of deficit-
swelling spending.
Congress must soon raise the debt ceiling, now at $12.1 trillion, so the
Treasury can continue to borrow, and Democratic leaders are eyeing a new
figure close to $14 trillion, pushing the issue past next November's
election.
But a bipartisan group in the Senate says a higher ceiling should be
tied to creation of a task force on deficit reduction, and House
Democratic moderates say their votes could depend on winning a "pay-as-
you-go" law requiring that new tax cuts or spending programs don't add
to the deficit.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., on CNN's "State of the Union," favored a
deficit task force. He said he didn't "see how this process where
everybody kind of lards on is going to actually ever come to an end
unless we finally have the discipline to do a straight up-or-down vote
across the board on revenues and spending cuts."
Proposals to put people back to work include tax breaks for new company
hires, small business tax breaks, public works spending and federal aid
to states.
Congress is also likely to extend measures, included in the $787 billion
stimulus act last February, that provide jobless payments and health
insurance subsidies for the unemployed.
_________
--
THE way to peace, freedom and prosperity:
Please read about the true principles of liberty at:
http://www.planetarybillofrights.org/
And read this:
This should be called "Textbook of Liberty"
http://www.laissez-fairerepublic.com/textbook.htm
meg
he would stop the pork being attached to bills. Is there ANYTHING he
hasn't lied about?????
Jamir Quay
Changing the BCS to a playoff system?
No...that too...
Stile4aly
Actually, he said he would reduce the amount of pork. This bill
contains 3.9 billion in pork. Last year's budget had 19.6 billion in
pork per the Citizens Against Government Waste website.
Sid9
"Stile4aly" <stil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:60b7cc0d-fa5d-425b...@o9g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
.
One man's "pork" is another man's job.
The government is trying to repair the mess the Republicans left.
Stile4aly
> "Stile4aly" <stile4...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
You're not going to find much argument from me. Though there is
surely some pork that is wasteful and unnecessary, some of it is very
valuable.
Sid9
.
Wouldn't it be nice if there were some human endeavor that was
perfect.
One man's "pork" is another man's urgent necessity.
Congress got it's job done without "continuing resolutions" that
plagued Washington for years.
Bob
*********************************************
Actually, he said he would go line by line and remove
wasteful spending. Do you think he will do that?
Devil's Advocate
> another one of the 'Barry" campaign promises he is breaking. He said
> he would stop the pork being attached to bills. Is there ANYTHING he
> hasn't lied about?????
>
Sure.
�Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would
necessarily skyrocket.� � Barack Obama
"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the
national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian
national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as
well-funded." -- Barack Obama
�I inhaled, isn�t that the point?� � Barack Obama
�You know, if you look at the victories and failures of the civil-rights
movement, and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it
succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples.
So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit
at a lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it, I�d be
okay, but the Supreme Court never entered into the issues of
redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and
economic justice in this society.
And uh, to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to
characterize the Warren Court, it wasn�t that radical. It didn�t break
free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding
Fathers in the Constitution � at least as it�s been interpreted, and
Warren Court interpreted it in the same way, that generally the
Constitution is a charter of negative liberties: [It] says what the
states can�t do to you, says what the federal government can�t do to
you, but it doesn�t say what the federal government or the state
government must do on your behalf.
And that hasn�t shifted, and one of the, I think, the tragedies of the
civil-rights movement was because the civil-rights movement became so
court-focused, uh, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of
the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that
are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which
you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways we still suffer
from that.� - Barack Obama, 2001
"The third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite
political philosophers: Mao Tse-tung and Mother Theresa -- not often
coupled with each other, but the two people I turn to most to basically
deliver a simple point which is 'you're going to make choices; you're
going to challenge; you're going to say why not; you're going to figure
out how to do things that have never been done before." - Anita Dunn,
Obama White House communications director.
"Any serious effort to reform the media system would have to be
necessarily part of a revolutionary program to overthrow the capitalist
system itself. Also, there is no real answer, but to remove, brick by
brick, the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on
socialist principles." - Robert McChesney, Obama FCC diversity czar.
" A legislative effort to regulate broadcasting in the interest of
democratic principles should not be seen as an abridgment of the free
speech guarantee." - Obama Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein, �Democracy and
the Problem of Free Speech�.
RichTravsky
>
>
> GOP: Senate Spending Bill Contains Billions in Pork
Deficits don't matter - Chickenhawk Cheney
Jamir Quay
DemoCraps love pork - Sen. Robert "King-o-Pork" Byrd.
JayPee Vee
> "Stile4aly" <stile4...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
Irrelevant, dismissed.
Geo
> "Stile4aly" <stile4...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>
> news:60b7cc0d-fa5d-425b...@o9g2000prg.googlegroups.com...> On Dec 14, 7:34 pm, meg <ekrub...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> another one of the 'Barry" campaign promises he is breaking. He
> >> said
> >> he would stop the pork being attached to bills. Is there ANYTHING
> >> he
> >> hasn't lied about?????
>
> > Actually, he said he would reduce the amount of pork. This bill
> > contains 3.9 billion in pork. Last year's budget had 19.6 billion
> > in
> > pork per the Citizens Against Government Waste website.
>
> .
> .
>
>
Fixed your last post for you.
Sanders Kaufman
news:60b7cc0d-fa5d-425b...@o9g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
Yeah- but he had rather BLACK skin when he did it, and to many Republicans,
that's unforgivable.
Sanders Kaufman
"Sid9" <si...@belsouth.net> wrote in message
news:hg7782$cs5$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
> Congress got it's job done without "continuing resolutions" that plagued
> Washington for years.
Indeed.
It's a real delight to have a president who's enjoys the support of the
American people.
Geo
> "Sid9" <s...@belsouth.net> wrote in message
Well, at least 47%.
Anonymous Infidel
fact that you're a total shit eating obamatard
JayPee Vee
> Time to change your name again JayPee...People have caught on to the
> fact that you're a total shit eating obamatard
Are you an adult?
Anonymous Infidel
RichTravsky
"Reagan proved deficits don't matter" ChickenPork Cheney
JayPee Vee
> Time to change your name again JayPee...People have caught on to the
> fact that you're a total fucking obamatard.
Blah blah blah... more rightard rant...