It’s past time for the Senate GOP to tell Reid, et al that they will vote for the tax bill and the House CR, and filibuster everything else. The Dems lost the election, and it’s time for them to go home. In the words of Oliver Cromwell:

“You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately… Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”

Under a 2003 bill meant to fight malaria and HIV in children globally we get this nice amendment.

“Provided, That of the funds appropriated under title III of this Act, not less than $710,000,000 shall be made available for family planning/reproductive health, including in areas where population growth threatens biodiversity or endangered species.”

So we are spending almost a billion dollars to make sure we don’t have too many pesky third world babies threatening our endangered species.

Amends section 128 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to provide $350M — $35M/year for 10 years — to create a new “San Francisco Bay Restoration Program.

If, in 2000 pages, a random “finger drop” lands on pork…what proportion of the bill is pork? (Need repeated trials for a true statistical sampling, but I don’t have time. However, I think it’s pretty likely the bill has an extremely low substance-to-pork ratio…)

Perhaps the Senate GOP could combine the budget and tax bill, then fillibuster both until the junk is taken out, or the GOP House takes over… ?

. . .submitted their wishlist, and they have dropped an unworkable mess on the Republicans’ doorstep.

Ignore it. Start fresh.

this is a bad dream….

have you ever stepped in a big pile of dog poop? and you stand there with one foot raised up…wondering what to do next

it’s like that

4 SEC. 514. None of the funds made available in this
5 Act may be transferred to any department, agency, or in
6 strumentality of the United States Government, except
7 pursuant to a transfer made by, or transfer authority pro
8 vided in, this Act or any other appropriations Act.

How can a high school grad such as myself make any sense out of this? Further sampling led to numerous ‘exceptions’ and requirements for those exceptions.

If even one Republican votes for this mess they deserve 155 weeks of unemployment insurance payments.

and tha this bill is a big part of that. Is that paranoia

You know when a dem indicates he is not going to vote for something that his party wants him too, he eventually folds and votes as they want. When a republican says they’ll vote for something the conservatives don’t want they always follow through with some flimsy excuse that almost feels like they are rubbing our noses in it.

the Desert Research Institute will “monitor reservoir evaporation and invasive species in the southwestern United States”. (p. 450) Might as well have described it as watching paint dry. This appropriation rounded out the long list of Nevada funding.

but at this point, does it matter?

5 For making, after June 15 of the current fiscal year,
6 benefit payments to individuals under title XVI of the So-
7 cial Security Act, for unanticipated costs incurred for the
8 current fiscal year, such sums as may be necessary.

Just another random check – page 1081

Also inclined to agree with eastbaylarry about making sense of this mess, only in my case I have a college degree in what is effectively Technical Writing. Of course the point of my training was to clarify, not obfuscate.

In the two examples quoted above (via cut-and-paste), notice that several words are hyphenated or just split at the end of a line. This is to prevent word searches from returning matches. In the quote referenced by Gadfly, “So-cial” is broken, so if you do a search for “Social Security” you won’t hit it.

This is very commonly done when our esteemed public servants are trying to hide their pork.

Boehner has the power to stop Omnibus and I called his office to urge that he do it. He should ditch the tax agreement in protest. The move would defend the Tea Party position on excessive spending and he could follow it up w/ a better tax bill in Jan.

It’s a no-brained. Really, this Reid Omnibus would set the agenda of the new Congress and derail many of Boehner’s priorities. Example: the crap bill would fund Obamacare.

This is a failed program according to this online Fact Sheet produced by National Immigration Forum, which claims it is a “leading immigrant advocacy organization”:

http://www.immigrationforum.org/images/uploads/2010/OperationStonegardenFactSheet.pdf

The paper indicates the budget was suppose to be reduced to $50 million this year and cites numerous instances of waste and abuse. They summarize by stating the program is clearly lacking in oversight and accountability.

Don;t get me wrong, I’m all for Border Security but I do not support wasteful programs. Besides, the paper brings up a good point; why is this program run by FEMA and not DHS? Seems redundant.

And they just drop it in the Republicans lap as an early Christmas present?

It will take 3 weeks to read it…..

None of the crap I have seen in this travesty is vital for the functioning of our government.

This looks like Stimulus III

Let’s say NO and start over Jan 5, 2011

through Sept 2012, thereby cancelling any ‘defunding’ planned by the Conservative new hires we sent to Washington.

Many many pages starting about page 977.

Wording I’m finding all through this bill such as:

“…$65,000,000, to remain available through Sep
tember 30, 2013:…”

Does this phrase mean this money cannot be spent *before* the date given?

If not, then what does this mean? If so, why is it in *this* bill?

I received this breakdown through a number of emails:
After reading parts of this pile of sewage it sounds pretty accurate as a summation,

Omnibus Porkulus Bill

Weighing in at nearly 2,000 pages you can imagine there are an equal number of reasons to dislike this behemoth. Chief among them:

• Cost. Though Democrats will say the omnibus holds spending below the FY11 discretionary cap proposed by Senators Sessions and McCaskill ($1.108 trillion), per usual the devil is in the details. As the table below shows, total discretionary spending embodied in this omnibus exceeds $1.2 trillion:

- Total outlays: $1,267 billion.
- $9 billion more spending than FY2010 spending ($1,098 billion in FY 2010).
- Nearly $18 billion more than spending contained in the September CR.

• Earmarks. The Democrats’ omnibus contains thousands of pet projects that have not been properly vetted. Need proof? Just search the bill using the following terms “Hawaii, “ “Montana,” “Nevada” ….. or check out the Appropriations website

• Funding for Obamacare. The omnibus contains more than $1 billion in funding for programs initiated by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, aka “The Clearly Unconstitutional Health Care Bill”) such as:
- An allocation of $750 million from the Prevention and Public Health Fund “slush fund” for a variety of programs
- $175.9 million “adjustment” in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Program Management account to implement the massive Medicaid expansion and cuts to Medicare Advantage
- $3 million for the workforce commission, and
- $80.7 million “adjustment” (plus-up) for HHS program management

• Procedure. This nearly 2,000-page behemoth was crafted in secrecy outside the normal appropriations process and without the proper oversight. The end result is a bloated, pork laden “Christmas tree” of irresponsible spending.

Okay, I haven’t read all of the comments to see if anyone has discussed this already, but over and over again, this bill makes funds available until September 30, 2012, which is the end FY 2011.

Am I incorrect in thinking that this bill was meant to fund the government through September 30, 2011 which is the end of the CURRENT FY 2010?

Are the Dems trying to tie the hands of the new Republican Congress by appropriating for an additional year?

They shouldn’t allow this to go forward until every word of the Bill is read…but every single word of every single earmarks as well if it’s possible to force them to be read.

I’d also like to see them read off the names of the Senators who requested each of these earmarks as they are read.

Not sure how the Senate works on stuff like this but I think it should be done if it can be forced…

And I once again call for every single unanimous consent request to be objected to….make Ried and the gang call the roll to turn out the lights at night…and back on in the morning….make points of order that a quorum is not present and make every Senator be on the floor for votes as often as possible

This should not be done in a lame duck session…and it should be dragged out as long as possible. even if it passes…each extra day Republicans can drag it out….is one less day Ried can bring up Start or DADT…and anything else he want’s to bring up!

The “Big Tent” analogy isn’t the correct one…the correct one is a MAGNET…we need to be a MAGNET that draws these independents in who are sick and tired of what’s going on in Washington—Fred Thompson

From Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC): asking to spend $1,000,000 on “project is advanced technology R&D, benefitting the sewn products and hosiery industry sectors through improved knowledge of body shape and the dissemination of said knowledge to improve apparel and hosiery fit and comfort for the consumer. Dissemination of new technology from around the globe to manufacturers and supply chain partners enhances domestic competitiveness.”

$800,000 to;

“the Farm Agency to carry out a pilot program to demonstrate the use of new technologies that increase the rate of growth of re-forested hardwood trees on private non-industrial forest lands, enrolling lands on the Gulf of Mexico that were damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Oh and read Section 718. Designation of Wilderness Areas.. I think the Federal government just took over the state of Montana.

should be kicked out of the Party.