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The Omnibus Appropriations Bill for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2009 was introduced in Congress by Rep. David Obey (D) from Wisconsin on February 23, when it was referred to the Committee on Appropriations. H.R. 1105 is over 1,130 pages long, with an estimated cost between $400 and $500 billion dollars, averaging out to approximately $5,100 per U.S. family.
Obey seemed content with the size of the stimulus and spending plans: “We are trying to fill what is going to be a $3 trillion hole in the economy because of the rising unemployment numbers." But Rep. Pete Sessions said, "There's nothing fiscally responsible regarding designating $1.2 trillion in spending in just two weeks," alluding to the $787 billion stimulus bill that was passed.
Legislative Rules provided for consideration of H.R. 1105 with one hour of general debate. The House passed it 245-178 in one day. It took me over four hours to skim through it. I ended up with a headache and I had to take two aspirin in order to continue; the headache might have been from staring at a computer screen or from the contents of the bill, I’m not sure which.
It is written in the language of politicians; phrases such as “official reception and representation expenses,” “programs activities,” “interagency cooperation,” “bilateral assistance,”and “performance partnership grants,” abound.
Congress is patting themselves on the back for blocking a pay raise in the bill. However, over $1 billion, with a “b,” is set aside for just salaries and expenses Representatives. For members who serve on committees or take on leadership roles, the rewards are great — $25 million allocated. The House Speaker job receives $4,879,000, with $25,000 for official expenses.
Over $5.5 billion is for HIV/AIDS prevention efforts — there’s now an AIDS office in the White House; the UN gets $50 million for “family planning,” which includes abortion; $400 million for the Office of Violence Against Women, mostly in the form of grants — $60 million “for grants to encourage arrest policies” — with $14 million for salaries to administer the grants.
In the “outside the realm of the Constitution” category, there is $115 million for the National Endowment for Democracy; $2 million for the Congressional-Executive Commission on the People’s Republic of China (what do they do?); $81 million for USAID; $545 million for family planning/reproductive health globally; $545 million to fight narcotics and terrorism in Columbia; and $116 million for the Democracy Fund, to help spread the joy of a mobocracy across the world. Syria, listed as a state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. government, will see $900,000 directed toward them as John Kerry (D-Mass.) visited them just last week in a “reaching out” effort. There is also $17 million targeted for China and Hong Kong, and an additional $19 million for the Election and Political Process Fund, which influences elections in foreign countries.
Also unconstitutional is the over $4.5 billion to be presidentially administered under the foreign military financing program. Over $2 billion goes to Israel for “border security programs and activities in the Sinai,” with $670 million to help them procure defense articles and services; Egypt gets $1.3 billion for border security as well, and Jordan $235 million.
The Department of Education is a big winner — remember the DOE? That’s the department President Ronald Reagan said he was going to eliminate. Over $5.3 billion is allocated for School Improvements; Innovation and Improvements, $996 million; Safe Schools and Citizenship Education, $690 million; English Language Acquisition, $730 million — I’ll leave you to guess what that one’s all about; and Special Education jumps to $11.5 billion. That’s almost $20 billion! Broken down, low-income schools will receive an additional $539 million for a total of $14.5 billion, and the Head Start program an additional $235 million, for a total of $7.1 billion.
Because the War on Drugs worked so well here in America, the government plans on taking it global. Over $875 million will be dedicated to fighting narcotics in the Middle East and Asia, with $315 million more for South America, excluding the already mentioned wad for Columbia.
NASA gets $4.5 billion for Science, $500 million for Aeronautics, $3 billion for Exploration, $5.7 billion for Space Exploration, and $169 million for Education; the National Science Foundation gets $5 billion; NOAA just over $3 billion.
My favorite picks are: $804,607,000 for the Department of Justice to rent office space in D.C.; the Office of Weed and Seed’s (not what you think) $25 million for mostly administrative costs; “whatever is necessary” for Federal Crop Insurance; and $5,404,000 for “payments from the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program Trust Fund, such sums as may be necessary for claims associated with vaccine-related injury or death.” Hey, if the government is going to mandate vaccines, they also have to pay for the damages. And then there's the $25 milion for the mysterious "Special Projects of National Significance."
Of course, there’s everyone’s perennial favorite, the IRS. The IRS’ administrative costs weren’t listed, but they do plan on needing over $2 billion for Taxpayer Services, with $5 billion earmarked for Enforcement. Operations Support will cost them $3.8 billion and only $2 million for Business Systems Modernization.
Tired of all the numbers, we can move on to the really scary changes. In Section 429 changes were made to the language that would allow the Interior Department to withdraw two Endangered Species Act rules within 60 days of enactment. Any project that would increase carbon dioxide or greenhouse gas emissions would have to be examined by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as to the potential impact on global warming or the polar bears. This would allow the present administration to effectively control and decide on energy production, agricultural practices, new construction, jobs, etc., without public comment or congressional action. All the power in favor of climate change management would be in the hands of the president and his administration.
For another example of a sweeping policy change the prohibition on foreign aid to Saudi Arabia has been deleted. Rep. Nita Lowey (D.- N.Y.) and chairwoman of the foreign operations appropriations subcommittee says not to worry, because “It’s all about giving the administration the authority to continue to provide some very limited dollars for counterintelligence; it’s very important that we provide some of those funds which gives our intelligence service and our government the opportunity to work closely with them.”
Lowey also defended the money for Syria as really not being foreign aid. “Nothing goes to Syria; it all goes to the non-governmental organizations who are doing democratizations,” she circumlocutioned.
There's much in the bill that relies on the judgement of the Secretary of State concerning such things as aid for foreign countries, including the Russian Federated States, and given the personage of the present secretary, this is very scary.
The new bill is the most egregious omnibus package yet, and touted by Democrats and some Republicans as the answer to our economic problems. As bad as the spending is, the policy changes in the form of power grabs are the most frightening.
Ask your representatives if they even read it.
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