Congress today cleared a $410 billion measure to fund the government for President Barack Obama’s signature, a measure denounced by most Republicans as an example of reckless spending. The Senate approved the measure by voice after it cleared a key procedural hurdle by a 62-35 vote. Sixty votes were required to shut down debate.
Obama will sign the measure Wednesday, the White House said, but he will also announce steps aimed at curbing lawmakers’ penchant for pet projects.
The $410 billion bill is chock-full of lawmakers’ pet projects and significant increases in food aid for the poor, energy research and other programs. It was supposed to have been completed last fall.
The bill ran into an unexpected political hailstorm in Congress after Obama’s spending-heavy economic stimulus bill and his 2010 budget plan forecasting a $1.8 trillion deficit for the current budget year. And Republicans seized on Obama’s willingness to sign a bill packed with pet projects after he assailed them as a candidate.
“If it had not been for the stimulus and the budget proposal it might have been … noncontroversial,” said House GOP leader John Boehner of Ohio. “The stimulus bill riled an awful lot of people up. … And then the budget proposal comes out.”
Within Democratic ranks, there was relief, not jubilation.
The 1,132-page spending bill has an extraordinary reach, wrapping together nine spending bills to fund the annual operating budgets of every Cabinet department except for Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs.
Described by lawmakers as a $410 billion measure – but officially tallied by the Congressional Budget Office at $408 billion because of technicalities involving heating subsidies for the poor – the bill was written mostly over the course of last year, with support from key Republicans such as Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the Senate’s No. 3 Republican.
They sit on the Senate Appropriations Committee. McConnell is the successful sponsor or co-sponsor of $76 million worth of pet projects, known as “earmarks,” not requested by former President George W. Bush, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a budget watchdog group. Alexander obtained a more modest 36 earmarks totaling $32 million.
Alexander supported the measure in the end; McConnell did not.