On Thursday the House passed an “Omnibus spending bill” worth $1.1 trillion, a hotly contested bill brimming with every pet project Congress could imagine. Today, less than a week later, the House has rushed through another $634 billion in spending.
The bill, voted on with almost no debate on the last day before the Congress goes into recess, was ostensibly a bill to fund the Pentagon and America’s assorted wars for the next nine months.
But as with every spending bill Congress passes (with alarming frequency) it was filled to the brim with unrelated spending, spending nearly a million dollars on a sprinkler system in Brooklyn and thousands of other projects totaling billions of dollars.
Though Republicans expressed annoyance at the large amount of such projects slipped into the “defense” bill, few dared to vote against war spending, and the bill passed 395-34.
Though President Obama had repeatedly taken the Bush Administration to task for not including the full cost of war in defense spending bills and promised not to repeat this, the bill included no money for the Afghan surge announced earlier this month, and will presumably set the stage for another “emergency” spending bill early in 2010 to pay for the war.
634 billion. Empires cost a lot of money.
Apparently no meaningfull or effective health care reform either,,,.
Max
what is this crap about a sprinkler system receiving federal subsidies? uuuugh
How much longer before We the People set up a guillotine on the Capital steps and watch 534 heads go bouncing down the steps? I'm letting Ron Paul off because he's the only one who's not a traitor. After that move the guillotine to the Supreme Court. for another nine.
This is the poem that Congress silently recites to itself before every spending bill vote:
To Congress, to congress,
To fund a fat pig;
Home again, home again,
Jiggety-jig.
To Congress, to congress,
To fund a fat hog;
Home again, home again,
Jiggety-jog.
(Continued in next post)
To Congress, to congress,
To fund a plum cake;
Home again, home again,
Congress is late!
To Congress, to congress,
To fund a plum bun;
Home again, home again,
Congress is done!
This is how they repay their biggest corporate campaign contributors. Now, do I really need to tell you who they are? I didn’t think so.