The porky Congress: House overrides Bush veto of water projects bill
I praised President Bush’s veto of the pork-laden water projects bill last week. As expected, it’s business as usual. The House overrode the veto earlier this evening. Triumph of the trough-stuffers:
A veto last week by President George W. Bush of a popular water projects bill was overridden by the House of Representatives on Tuesday, moving Congress closer to enacting legislation that would authorize $23 billion for nearly 900 projects across the United States.
The House voted 361-54 to override the president’s veto. The Senate is expected to take up the water bill as early as Wednesday.
If similar action occurs in the Senate, it would mark the first time Congress has mustered enough votes to override the president’s veto. Bush has vetoed five bills during his time in office…
…”We understand that members of Congress are going to support the projects in their districts. Budgeting is about making choices and defining priorities — it doesn’t mean you can have everything,” he said. “This bill doesn’t make the difficult choices; it says we can fund every idea out there.”
The Senate passed the bill, 81-12, in September after the House of Representatives approved it by 381-40 a month earlier, both with more than the two-thirds majorities needed to override a presidential veto.
CAGW:
The spending levels in H.R. 1495 are excessive. The final conference report of $23 billion was far more than the $14 billion and $15 billion price tags the Senate and House recommended in each of their respective bills and $18.1 billion more than the president requested. The final bill includes several pork projects that are outside of the mission of the Corps of Engineers, transfers billions of dollars in costs from non-federal projects to taxpayers, and adds to the backlog of projects already in the pipeline.
The conference report also contained numerous pork-barrel projects which were “air-dropped” in at the last minute, well after the House and Senate had voted on their respective versions. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) attempted to challenge $2 billion worth of earmarks that were added in conference, but was rebuffed because Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) interpretation of the new transparency and accountability rules permits senators to add pork with impunity to authorization bills such as WRDA.
Commenter Feebie asks if this is the same bill that has Speaker Pelosi’s waterfront earmark. Yup. Via the RSC blog:
On Speaker Pelosi’s website, it says the following about WRDA: The Water Resources Development Act of 2007 will provide critical funding to small communities that have gone too long without assistance. To these communities, the projects and studies authorized by this legislation will have equally beneficial impacts on public health, environmental quality, and economic vitality.
The Speaker has her own earmark in the bill (Sec 5054) that provides for the re-development of part of the San Francisco Waterfront. The Speaker, (and/or her husband) collects rent from four separate commercial real estate properties that are very close to the waterfront location that the earmark provides “critical funding” for. According to disclosure forms, these properties resulted in rental income as high as $3 million in 2005 for the Pelosi’s and could stand to benefit from improvement to the local neighborhood that the earmark supposedly provides.
*** UPDATE (5:15 PM) – Different version have the earmark(s) in SECTIONS 5050 and 5051 ****
The Pelosi properties, all located within 5,400 feet and 9,000 feet of the WRDA earmark are:
1301 Sansome LLC
Pelosi Real Estate Partnership
Rent Income: $1 million (2005)945 Battery LLC
Pelosi Real Estate Partnership
Rental Income: $1 million (2005)901 Battery LLC
Pelosi Real Estate Partnership
Rental Income: $15,000 (2005)45 Beiden Place
Pelosi Real Estate Asset
Rental Incone: $1 million (2005)
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Categories: Democrats, George W. Bush, Pork
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Vote out the Rinos that voted for this override. Conservativism will be back.
Michelle,
do we know if this is the same bill where appropriations for Pelosi’s District in SF would directly benefit here husband’s properties on the waterfront?
Where can I find the link, if you don’t mind me asking?
“New Wild Pig Species Reported in Brazil” Headline on drudge. We need one to read “new wild pig species reported in Congress.”
Thanks, Michelle!
ummmmmmm.. Pork, Congre$$’s preferred white meat.
I saw that too! yum new species of baconnnnnnnn.
pork, not so fond of….
John Ansell
Anus porkus v. dhimmicraticus! and v. phonicus republicanicus
It’s easy to spend money that isn’t yours…
Instead of doing something productive like eliminating the Alternative Minimum Tax, they just keep on spending and spending. We really do need to get rid of the Rinos.
AJ, New BLT’s if we can get lettuce!!!
garden, backyard, covered…. lol
What really amazes me – I’m here in the northeast….our congress people even say when running for re-election things like “we send $1 to Washington but we only get 60 cents back”…so let’s us spend more so we can all send more money to Washington. Uh Duh
Hmmmmm, maybe this is why the middle eastern country’s hate pork so much.
Sometimes I think that I might like to keep some more of my money, but those swell folks in Santa Fe and D.C. just know how to spend it better. I’m so greedy sometimes.
I think they should have to catch a greased pig on the floor before they get the money.
If the Republicans cannot maintain discipline in their own party, then they are all at fault. I get tired of this routine: “Oh, we would have held the line in spending but for those evil RINOs.” B*llsh*t. It’s all a game and it shows what will happen the next time the Republicans take congress — same old stuff until the country is bankrupt. Should there be a next time, of course.
Careful, you’re getting Bill Clinton excited…
If this works, “>here’s a link to 1301 Sansome in San Francisco. Near Pier 23.
Here’s 945 Battery near Pier 15
Beiden Place – could that be Belden Place, in Chinatown?
The Embarcadero’s a pretty good place for those investements. Now if only the governement would fix it up to improve the value – oh wait…
Hmmmmm looks like Nancy could greatly benefit nicley from some water front revitalization.
I’m sure there’s not any ethics violations here.
It seems to me that many of the RINO’s who got turned out last time were the ones who didn’t catch on about controlling spending. I suspect the same will happen again. This time though, it’ll be more Dems getting the boot too. Americans are not enamored with congressional behavior.
Hillary, you dope. You and Bubba investing in Whitewater, when you could have the government fixing up the waterfront near multi-million dollar investements in one of the most expensive cities in America? Oink oink.
Chinatown? Chinatown? Maybe this isn’t about the property Pelosi owns…hmmmmm!
Chinatown – maybe it’s a mail drop for all the fake addresses that belong to Hillary’s donors.
UN-CLEAN!
No those are the addresses their building.
I guess you’re right Alohaguy #17. It would also be too dirty for San Fran Nan to clean up. We all know how she’s keeping a clean house. All those lumps under the carpets are speed bumps. They are not piles of dirt, watch the watch, your eyes are getting heavy, they are speed bumps, you’re getting tired speeeeeed bumps….. you will never think of dirt again….snap
The flying pigs, and swimming pork pictures have been very funny. The veto override is not. Greedy bastards!!!
How else do they expect to get re-elected if they don’t buy off votes with everybody else’s money? This is what they think Congress is for. Steal from America and give back to your district so that you get re-elected to continue stealing from America.
This has got to stop at some point. A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you start talking about ‘real money’.
Ansell:
Exactly! IMHO, the problem is much bigger than just the earmarks.
Unfortunately, earmarks are common practice with all of our representatives (Republicans and Democrats, alike). My problem is not so much with the “earmark” (some would say in certain circumstances they are a necessary evil) but rather that #1, Nancy has a legitimate conflict of interest here and that #2, Pelosi and Reid vowed in January to curb the egregious practice of earmarks by requiring representatives to file forms stating potential conflicts of interest in advance.
Her spokespeople were pretty quick to come out and dismiss any potential profits from said bill from being “speculative at best” being since her husbands properties were at least one mile away from the redevelopment areas benefiting from this bill.
In light of this statement, I would like to bring up that:
1- Nancy tried to pass a similar earmark for $20 million in July 0f 2005 (before she was elected Speaker of the House) but the bill died.
2- As Speaker of the House, your earmarks have a greater likelihood of passing because you have more political buying power
3- After this bill failed (July 2005) and before (and some could say in anticipation of his wife’s potential promotion) Paul Pelosi then increased his interest in these properties from $1 million to $5 million.
4- This waterfront redevelopment project will use tax payer dollars to revamp the downtown water district and thereby increasing the value of the surrounding properties.
Way to clean house Pelosi. Just another card carrying member of the EVIL Mary Poppins Club.
Don’t call it “pork” or CAIR will sue.
I’m beginning to think it will take nothing less than a nationwide tax revolt for Congress to get the message that we the people don’t want deficit spending anymore! SOO-EY PIG-PIG-PIG!!!
Isn’t all that pork going to upset their Islamic allies?
What is sad is this has been going on since President Bush took office and it was not until this year he finally decided to start to veto some of these pork bills.
Way to be responsible Congress! Keep trying to bribe us with our own money. We really need to clean out the halls of Congress. Term limits are really starting to look like a great alternative to the self anointed ruling class we have had to put up with for the last couple of decades. Time to throw the bums out!
Wednesday Greetings Mrs. Malkin and loyal community. The above must be as a red light flashing that the USA is “maxing-out” on its national credit card. Entitlements, pork-barrel projects, foreign wars: the time shall soon be hard upon us when we must learn to pay for them out of current tax revenues. This means drastic change in the ways of Washington. Behold the weeping and gnashing of teeth come the next congress and administration, for the brutal indicators as above will come upon us not in simple arithmetic sequence, but exponentially, and the time for the fool’s world will be done.
Thx for the insight.
Wouldn’t ‘Water Distric’ include the area within a mile of the water? It doesn’t specifically say ‘Waterfront’. My guess is that some of that money would go towards improving the view and road directly infront of her properties. Free landscaping! courtesy of the taxpayer.
Can’t bleeve MM quoted Finding Nemo below the headline. Sacrilege!