House passes $516 billion spending bill
Update 12/18 8:52am Eastern. Many readers asked me to check whether border fence-gutting provisions were included in the version of the bill passed last night. See here for the answer.
Update 12/18 8:00am Eastern. The Senate’s turn…
***
The vote took place tonight, but the tango continues:
The House Monday approved a $516 billion measure funding 14 Cabinet agencies and funding for troops in Afghanistan, setting the stage for a year-end budget deal with the White House.
President Bush has signaled he’ll ultimately sign the measure — assuming up to $40 billion more is provided by the Senate for the Iraq war — despite opposition from GOP conservatives.
In an unusual two-step, lawmakers first voted 253-154 to approve the omnibus spending bill; they then voted 206-201 to add $31 billion for troops in Afghanistan to the measure. The combined $516 billion spending package is set for Senate debate on Tuesday.
The year-end measure mostly sticks within Bush’s budget, though it shifts billions of dollars into politically sensitive programs he sought to cut. Bush signaled he would sign the measure, awarding a 4 percent increase, on average, to domestic programs.
Bush’s approval depends on Senate Republicans succeeding, later this week, in adding up to $40 billion for U.S. troops in Iraq.
Here are the roll call votes for the first vote and the second vote.
End result: “Twin defeat” for the Dems…
Republicans generally opposed the omnibus bill measure since it fails to include funding for military operations in Iraq and provides $13 billion above Bush’s “top line” request for the one-third of the budget passed each year by Congress.
The Senate is expected to approve the bill after substituting $70 billion in funding for Iraq and Afghanistan. The complicated plan calls for the House to have a vote limited to the war funding. That vote, if successful, would clear the combined bill for Bush’s approval and allow lawmakers to go home for Christmas.
The result would be a twin defeat for Democrats, who had vowed not to allow additional Iraq war funding without conditions and had spent months on legislation to add $27 billion to domestic programs, an almost 7 percent increase.
Fiscal conservatives are still not satisfied. GOP Rep. Mike Pence blasts the legislation:
“Thirty-five hundred pages, thirty-four pounds, and members of the minority have had, at this very hour, roughly one day to review its contents.
“This legislation, which we will consider under this rule will cost approximately $515 billion, including $44 billion designated as so-called emergency spending and over $10 billion in other budget gimmicks being used to artificially lower the cost.
“I want to commend President Bush and the men and women of goodwill in this Congress who have worked to lower the cost of this legislation from its House and Senate-passed versions. There have been improvements on the margin. There has been lipstick placed on this pig, but it’s still a pig. And the American people are soon to find that out.
“For example, this legislation includes $31 billion dollars for military operations in Afghanistan and for protective equipment for troops serving overseas but it does not include one dime to fund our troops in harm’s way, at this hour, serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
“I say to my patriotic colleagues in the other party, ‘it is unconscionable that we would bring before this Congress a spending bill, which for some purpose serving some audience far to the left of this chamber, I suspect, we are not including a single cent for our soldiers in harm’s way.
“This omnibus contains over $11 billion dollars in so-called emergency and contingency spending. Let me favor my colleagues with some of the emergency provisions in this bill: Twenty million dollars for salaries at the Farm Service Agency. Apparently salaries of employees at the Farm Service Agency aren’t anticipated. Eight million dollars for salaries at the Department of Justice, legal activities and salaries also at DOJ. Salaries and expenses for everything from the U.S. Marshall Service and U.S. Attorneys. Where is the surprise and the emergency in finding out we have employees at the Department of Justice?
“My own personal favorite here: We have a legislative emergency in the form of $100 million dollars for Presidential security at political conventions. This is the so-called emergency spending. Those who say this legislation comes in at or near the President’s number will not include these provisions. There are so many more that will be explored in the months ahead.
“This bill is also chalked full of the very worst kind of pork barrel spending. Let me say, I request earmark projects for my district and there are some necessary infrastructure projects in this legislation for eastern Indiana. I brought every single one of them through the ordinary committee process in the light of day. But there are, we must assume, thousands of so-called air-dropped earmarks in this legislation which will not come to light until after this legislation is signed into law.
“So it’s what we don’t know in this legislation that frustrates me the most. Twenty-four hours, I say again, twenty-four hours to review thirty-five hundred pages and thirty-four pounds.
“Twenty years ago, President Reagan came to this podium and said these words, ‘the budget process is broken down. It needs a drastic overhaul.’
“With each ensuing year, the spectacle before the American people is the same as it was this Christmas: Budget deadlines delayed or missed completely. Hundreds of billions worth of spending packed into one bill, and a federal government on the brink of default. So said Ronald Reagan before this Congress, two decades ago, ‘The more things change, the more they seem to stay the same.’
“I was a harsh critic of reckless and wasteful spending when my party was in control and I rise respectfully to register the same dissent. We can do better. The American people expect from this Congress, whatever its management, to do better than to pile into a heap our unfinished business the week before Christmas and send it all to the President after barely seeing the light of day.”
See what others have said
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I ought to know but I don’t.
Is this some kind of all-time record?
Half a trillion in one fell swoop!
Sheesh.
We must continue to push this kind of behavior in front of the public because we know the MSM won’t report the truth about what was done to our military in harm’s way in Iraq.
Michelle … have you been able to confirm the rumor that they stripped several Billion Dollars out that was to build the border fence?
I figure that 3400 pages and 33 pounds of the total bill were mostly pork. The other 100 pages and 1 pound of the bill probably covered the real needs.
Couple that with another late night release by the Dems and then a rushed vote to prevent proper review and nothing much has changed.
Thanks for staying on top of this Michelle.
Sounds to me like we traded pork for votes for the war. Probably a good deal overall.
Half a trillion here, and half a trillion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money!
Sounds like good news and bad news. The good news is the republicans have given the democrats another whipping. The bad news is the democrats have been whipped bad enough for them to really clean up their act. It’ll be up to the voters to give them that kind of whipping.
Make that the democrats haven’t been whipped bad enough to clean up their act.
I am off my game on proofreading today.
We need to vote them all out and start over. This is retarded and unacceptable.
I am a troop and I find this political falderal disgusting.
Is this why we fight?
There should be a mandatory waiting period on legislation and spending bills. One hour per page. 3,500 pages dropped with 24 hours to go is a travesty. You’d have to read two and a half pages a minute, day and night, just to consume that amount of material. And that doesn’t give you any time to understand it or debate it.
Honestly, I hope they fail to get Iraq funding in there, and Bush vetoes it. At least that would give people time to read the thing.
Snooper gets the Word of the Day award. Down with Falderal!
Seriously, how can the citizens stand by and watch this nest of clowns so flippantly give us the financial bird while they vote to spend a half trillion dollars with a 3,500-page bill that no one has read? They confiscate the hard-earned dollars of the quiet, productive masses and then - with nary a thought - spend billions and billions without a hint of responsibility about whether those dollars are spent wisely or Constitutionally.
I have only found a portion of the bill available online. It is stuck away as an amendment to the State department funding bill.
Some sections I have looked at have pdf’s that are over 500 pages in size.
I am still downloading all the parts this thing comes from in about 12 or 15 pdf files and I don’t think it even includes all the attachments which are where all the earmarks are buried, but just the text of the main legislation
Here is the link to the page if any of you want to take a look at this mess
Hmmm… 34 pounds of pork at a price of 515 billion dollars works out to over 15 billion dollars a pound! That is one expensive Christmas ham we’ll have to pay for when the bill comes due on April 15th. Must be corn fed pork.
Is there any way we could convince congress to govern itself and put limits on how much pork each member can consume? It seems they are dead set on breaking the record each and every year. And some, like Murtha, think it is an all-you-can-eat buffet.
The one hour allowed for the debate on the bill today worked out to 9.2 billion per minute.
wow 500 billion. I wonder how much we’ll borrow from the Chinese on this. Cut the fat from the government- DHS, education, fcc, fda, atf, IRS…
Big difference between old style conservatives who believed in fiscal responsibility and borrow-and-spend conservatives.
Oh great, add that to someone else’s mortgage I have to help pay, and their kid’s healthcare…
This little piggy went to market,
This little piggy stayed at home,
This little piggy had roast beef,
This little piggy had none.
And this little piggy went…
“Wee wee wee” all the way home…
I remember Ronald Reagan in front of a joint session of congress holding a two foot high stack of papers (one of these omnibus budgets the demcraps have made famous over the 4 decades they controlled the House), dropping it with a loud thud on the table next to him then saying something like never send me one of these again.
I hope the measure fails as well. Call the mangy democraps out on this, pass a budget that can stand up to the light of day. Fund our Troops so they can continue to fight this War on Jihad.
The compassionate conservative neocons have hijacked the party.
If you want more of the same, support Mitt McGulabee in the primaries.
What people forget is that this is about one quarter of the budget - just the discretionary spending. Social Security, medicare, etc. are the big part. Compared to getting those in line, the earmarks are insulting chump change.
I think Bush should VETO this bill, Shut Down the Government, and give a national address to list all the Pork and wasteful spending. Congress needs to be called to task for their incompetence.
I have to agree with wrenossen entitlement programs are considered must pays and eat up most of the Federal budget and it will only get worse as the “Baby Boomers” start to dip into what is left of the Social Security System. Can’t thank the Democrats enough for adding it to the General Fund so they could pillage it for their social programs for the last couple of decades. Discretionary budgets have been shrinking to pay entitlements I am a Budget Analyst for the Air Force and every year our discretionary budget gets smaller and smaller. I haven’t seen it this bad since I was a young Airman living under the Carter Administration’s Military spending cuts (makes me shudder to think about those days again).
I also heard the $3 billion for the border fence have been stripped in the Senate and am hot under the collar about that too. Don’t even get me started about failing to fund the troops in Iraq, I have people in my Squadron serving over there and would love to kick each Senator’s and Congressman’s butt responsible for shorting them. It will be interesting to see how much pork these crapweasels have stuffed into this spending bill. Between this and failing to relieve us of the AMT burden coming to bite many of us in the butt in April I didn’t think Congress could do much more to lower their approval rating, I was wrong.
They have never heard of the K.I.S.S. method. obiviously.
Yeah, what he said.
_______________________________________
Note for Democrats:
You have chosen to, once again, screw the troops and you do it and think no one is watching. I tell you what, you have barked up the wrong tree. You have chosen to take a stand but are on the wrong side of the aisle.
I posted this before and I will post it again:
WTF??? Playing lefty politics while our troops are in the field, fighting a good fight and winning. You try to handcuff them and place them in further danger in order to appease the nutroots of your consituency. Well, colossial mistake. Big! Biggest!!
Please take a few minutes to contact your legislators and tell me under no uncertain terms do they withhold funding for our troops any longer than they already have. How dare they go on Christmas break and leave our troops in the field without the money they need to carry out this war? How dare they?
Let them know how you feel - here:
Fund the troops.
Term Limits for Congress. (And no grandfathering).
Restore Impoundment.
Oh how I wish this were possible, but Congress would never give the president that authority.
I agree with the TERM LIMITS for Congress!
I think it is well past time to consider completely restructuring the government altogether in such a manner as was provided for in that long forgotten document called the Constitution.
hell yes. Barry Goldwater, hell, even Ronald Reagan, wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance these days with the way the neocons who’ve hijacked the party are acting.
Just as an aside, they didn’t slip in the DREAM act, did they? That would be just like these imbeciles…