RedState Action Alert: Dissect the Omnibus
Senate Democrats unveiled earlier this afternoon a 1,924-page omnibus spending bill to fund the government through fiscal year 2011. Aides to GOP legislators on Capitol Hill have already begun poring over the $1.1 trillion package, describing the proposal as “a total mess” to Fox News.
Republican lawmakers — including those in the lower chamber, like Speaker-elect John Boehner — are already vowing to help kill the appropriations measure, which freezes 2010’s $3.5 trillion budget for the following year without allowing for any spending cuts.
Offered in the waning days of the present congressional session, the bill designates $80 million in federal funds for the preservation of Pacific salmon and $14 million in clean water grants for Alaska’s native population. Of course, it doesn’t end there.
We’ve obtained a copy of the lame duck legislation so that RedState’s readers might begin dissecting the bill, posting the most egregious examples of pork barrel spending in the comments section. Embedded below the fold you will find the full nearly 2,000-page document
Omnibus2010
UPDATE: According to a tally by Sen. John McCain’s office, the legislation includes 6,488 earmarks totaling nearly $8.3 billion. In a speech from the floor of the Senate, McCain blasted the bill, asking is his colleagues if they had been “stricken with amnesia” for appropriating such wild earmarks only weeks after a swift electoral rebuke for Democrats.
“Enough with the spending, enough of mortgaging our children and our grandchildren’s futures. The phenomenon of the Tea Party — taxed enough already — they were against the spending, the earmarking,” McCain, who is looking to force the bill be read in its entirety from the floor of the Senate, said. “What is going on here? Are we tone deaf? Are we stricken with amnesia?”
The senator’s aides — as well as the senator himself on Twitter — have begun circulating what they deem the most outrageous and wasteful spending measures in the bill. Some choice selects:
$247,000 - Virus free grapes in Washington State
$413,000 - Peanut research in Alabama
$125,000 - Fishery equipment for the Guam Fisherman’s Cooperative Association
$349,000 - Swine waste management in North Carolina
$277,000 - Potato pest management in wisconsin
$246,000 - Bovine tuberculosis treatment in Michigan and Minnesota
$522,000 - Cranberry and blueberry disease and breeding in New Jersey
$500,000 - Oyster safety in Florida
$400,000 - Solar parking canopies and plug-in electric stations in Kansas
$165,000 - Maple syrup research in Vermont
Continue posting those earmarks you’ve found in the comments section.
Replies
My gosh what were these jerkoffs thinking what that the country would never notice anything, Of course it comes down to blame bush as always.
Wow, how soon they forget! Guess when 2012 comes around we get rid of another lot of them and make sure that the rest understand we mean business.
I said this before the election and I say it again, THE REPUBLICANS STILL DON'T GET IT!!!!!. Can't they see that this 2 year extension of the Bush tax cuts will not produce any more jobs? They say that they can't let the tax cuts expire because of the poor middle class. Well they can and then when Jan 1 comes it can be dealt with, retroactively for the taxes. No one is going to start hiring on a 2 year extension, a temporary extension? No one! Then they added all this pork to the bill and the republicans say, well we have to get those tax extensions, and this is the best we can do. BULLCHIT! So since the elction, what the republicans have done is add to the defecit and got a 2 year tax extension. I just don't know what else to say, shame, shame, shame! When the jobs fail to appear, just who do they think will get the blame for that? The republicans, that's who. Nobama played the republicans like a fiddle and they are to stupid to see it, or they just don't care!