Omnibus Spending Bill! The house approves the omnibus spending bill, 245-178, combines nine appropriations measures to fund the federal government through September, the end of its fiscal year. Democrats said the spending increase, on top of a $787 billion economic stimulus package signed last week, was needed to make up for tighter budgets during the Bush administration.
Representative James McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat said:
“We need to turn the page once and for all on the last eight years. I’m glad that we have reversed the Bush cuts on domestic priorities.”
Republicans criticized the spending increase as unaffordable while the government is projected to run a deficit topping $1.2 trillion. They also said the bill contradicted President Barack Obama’s pledge to rein in the federal deficit.
Representative Jerry Lewis of California, the top Republican on the House Appropriations Committee said:
“I’m embarrassed by this omnibus spending bill. Even as the president talks about the need to put our economic house in order, this House continues to spend and spend and spend and spend. Clearly the Congress has lost its way.”
President Barack Obama plans to send Congress his first budget request for the fiscal year beginning in October. Earlier this week, he convened a summit at which he pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term.
The omnibus bill would reverse a number of Bush administration policies. It would let people visit relatives in Cuba once a year rather than once every three years. It also would undo restrictions enacted in 2005 on food and medicine sales to the communist nation.
The spending bill would end a voucher program in Washington, D.C., providing scholarships to low-income children to attend private schools. It would halt a program letting Mexican trucks operate widely in the U.S. and drop Bush administration plans to double the size of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission would get 31 percent funding increases, while the Food and Drug Administration’s budget would grow by 19 percent.
Other initiatives slated for increases include Pell college tuition grants, the National Institutes of Health and aid for low-income housing programs. The budget for the House of Representatives itself would increase by 10 percent while funding for Senate operations would grow by 8 percent.
The legislation also includes almost $8 billion for 8,500 congressional pet projects known as earmarks, according to the Washington-based Taxpayers for Common Sense. Among the earmarks are $1.8 million for swine odor and manure management research in Iowa, $2 million to promote astronomy in Hawaii and $381,000 for music programs at New York City’s Lincoln Center.
