Senate Approves Huge Spending Bill After Democrats' Delay

The New York Times ^ | January 22, 2004 | DAVID STOUT

[CSM]

I thought that she was from the "Block"!

[jgrubbs]

This is by far the largest single helping of federal pork that Pennsylvania and New Jersey has ever won:

at least $390 million for Pennsylvania
at least $225 million for New Jersey

[jgrubbs]

This is by far the largest single helping of federal pork that Pennsylvania and New Jersey has ever won:

at least $390 million for Pennsylvania
at least $225 million for New Jersey

[CSM]

What is the total budget? $2 Trillion?

[Naspino]

I think we added it up before to something like 68 million. Out of two trillion its nothing. I'd rather cut the major offenders (education and healthcare).

[jgrubbs]

I don't know, I see the total for this spending bill is $820 billion.

[jeterisagod]

There wasn't anything stuffed into it prior to this vote. This was on the adoption of the Conference Report--the final version of the bill. It's a straight up or down vote without amendment.

[Naspino]

My gut tells me the holdouts were there to keep the vote delayed till after the SOTU speech. Timing is everything.

[jgrubbs]

I'd rather cut the major offenders (education and healthcare).

The 1996 GOP platform called for abolishing the Department of Education and ending "federal meddling in schools.", it also called for eliminating the departments of Commerce, Energy, and Housing and Urban Development and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The $56 billion in total discretionary funding for federal education is an all-time high. Under President Bush, in just three years the Education Department’s overall funding will have increased by $13.8 billion.

Federal education spending has increased by 118 percent from 1996 (the first fiscal year under a Republican majority in Congress) to 2002. The President’s FY 2004 builds on that increase.

[sinkspur]

Republicans have solid hold on House-more so if SCOTUS doesn't rule against TX re-districting plan.

The Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal. The Texas redistricting plan drawn up by the GOP stands.

[ItsMyVoteDammit]

I sometimes think that the two party system is just a tool these guys use to keep us minions at each other's throats while they are pick-pocketing our money. Doesn't matter which party is in power, at the end of the day the average joe just has less dollars in his pockets.

[jgrubbs]

More "conservative" spending bump!

[blowfish]

With 'victories' like this, who needs defeats?

[mabelkitty]

Olive fruitfly research?
My interpretation: annual salary given to someone's brother-in-law so he'll quit asking when some Congresscritter was going to get him a job

that or just plain extortion pay-off.

[mabelkitty]

Do you even understand the overtime bill?
Read the Live Thread on the Senate from today if you don't.

[Naspino]

I can forgive Bush on education spending in this election. He's trying to keep the Democrats out of power and crush their support around the country. The courts system and terroism is #1 in my book.

[CSM]

Looks like my guess was right on. With growth to 2.7Billion by 2007.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2004/summarytables.html

SUMMARY TABLES
Table 7. BUDGET TOTALS

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2002 Actual Estimate

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2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

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In billions of dollars:
Receipts 1,853 1,756 1,797 2,033 2,215 2,360 2,480
Outlays 2,011 2,212 2,272 2,338 2,452 2,573 2,706

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Deficit -158 -455 -475 -304 -238 -213 -226
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) 10,337 10,746 11,266 11,829 12,413 13,024 13,671
As a percent of GDP:
Receipts 17.9 16.3 16.0 17.2 17.8 18.1 18.1
Outlays 19.5 20.6 20.2 19.8 19.8 19.8 19.8

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Deficit -1.5 -4.2 -4.2 -2.6 -1.9 -1.6 -1.7

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[johnb838]

he = her (ooops)

[Pagey]

If what you list is true, then I submit the following from Stephen Moores "OUR UNCONSTITUTIONAL CONGRESS":
In 1827, the famous Davy Crockett was elected to the House of Representatives. During his first term of office, a $10,000 relief bill for the widow of a naval officer was proposed. Colonel Crockett rose in stem opposition and gave the following eloquent and successful rebuttal:

We must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not attempt to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right as individuals to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money".

In a famous incident in 1854, President Franklin Pierce courageously vetoed an extremely popular bill intended to help the mentally ill saying: "I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity." To approve such spending, he argued, "would be contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded." Grover Cleveland, the king of the veto, rejected hundreds of congressional spending bills during his two terms as president in the late 1800s, because, as he often wrote: "I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution."

Were Jefferson, Madison, Crockett, Pierce, and Cleveland merely hardhearted and uncaring penny pinchers, as their critics have often charged? Were they unsympathetic toward fire victims, the mentally ill, widows, or impoverished refugees? Of course not. They were honor bound to uphold the Constitution. They perceived - we now know correctly - that once the government genie was out of the bottle, it would be impossible to get it back in.

[RockyMtnMan]

A good example of incrementalism, individually most of these seem like no big deal (even though they don't belong in a FEDERAL budget), but all added up it's a big helping of pork.

Bush had better use his veto on this one.