Congress Approves $410 Billion Spending Bill

Another victory for President Obama and the Democrats as the Senate approved the $410 billion funding measure to keep the government running for the rest of the year. The White House announced that President Obama will sign the measure on Wednesday, where he will also announce steps aimed at curbing lawmakers' penchant for pet projects.

Now personally I believe that earmarks are getting a bad name, and are not as evil as Republicans are making them out to be. Earmarks should be a tool that Representatives and Senators use, to specifically meet their states needs. Its just that earmarks should be above board, clear who has submitted the earmark, and not tied to any lobbyist. Earmarks should be done in conjunction with state and local government to ensure they meet the needs of the state.

The media has been too willing to confuse pork barrel projects and earmarks. A pork barrel project is usually an earmark, but not every earmark is pork barrel.

I don't understand why the media is trying to say this bill is an embarresment for President Obama. He argued against wasteful spending, not earmarks (that was McCain who has priven to be an idiot). In addition, what this economy needs is spending, and that is what this bill delivers. And 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, so the belly-aching by Republicans has been humorous. By the way even though McConnell was very active in writing the bill, he voted against it. Can you say covering his butt?

The spending measure chips away at several leftover Bush administration policies. It clears the way for the Obama administration to reverse a rule issued late in the Bush administration that says greenhouse gases may not be restricted to protect polar bears from global warming. Another Bush administration rule that reduced the input of federal scientists in endangered species decisions can also be quickly overturned without a lengthy rulemaking process.
The big increases — among them a 14 percent boost for a popular program that feeds infants and poor women and a 10 percent increase for housing vouchers for the poor — represent a clear win for Democrats who spent most of the past decade battling with Bush over money for domestic programs.

Generous above-inflation increases are spread throughout the bill for initiatives that the Bush Administration underfunded, including a $2.4 billion, 13 percent increase for the Agriculture Department and a 10 percent increase for Amtrak passenger rail system.

Obama forecasts $1.75 trillion deficit this year

Today President Barack Obama and his administration have predicted a deficit of $1.75 trillion in a budget proposal for 2009. This is the legacy of President Bush, a $1,075,000,000 deficit. This gaping hole in the treasury is huge! This deficit represents 12.3% of U.S. GDP (gross domestic product), and is the largest percentage share of GDP since the end of World War II.

The President's budget sets some major goals such as overhauling the healthcare system and shoring up the U.S. economy.

Now senior Obama administration officials are suggesting that the President's expensive policy goals will be offset by cuts in spending on existing programs that are no longer necessary or have proven wasteful. The Obama administration is promising to put the country in better fiscal shape.

This is going to be difficult to near impossible as federal spending is skyrocketing as Obama officials try to jolt the faltering economy with public-works spending and tax cuts and continue to bail out the troubled financial industry. Still President Obama has made a bold pledge to halve the more-than $1 trillion deficit he inherited from former Republican President George W. Bush in four years.

To do this Obama is producing tax increases on wealthier Americans and reduce the cost of the Iraq war as a troop drawdown, to curb the deficit. Currently the budget projects costs of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan as totaling just over $140 billion this year and $130 billion in the 2010 fiscal year. Obama's budget proposes that annual costs will drop after the drawdown to $50 billion annually. The proposed budget would also phase out government payments to crop producers making more than $500,000 -- saving $9.8 billion over 10 years -- and eliminate subsidies for cotton storage, saving an additional $570 million over the same period.

Deficit Watch

Remember when Bush was going to balance the budget by 2009? Guess he is going to miss that promise.

John D. McKinnon writes in the Wall Street Journal: "The federal government ran a deficit of almost $455 billion in fiscal 2008, the White House reported, a record that will likely be far exceeded by the red ink in the current fiscal year.

"The widening deficit -- up from $162 billion for fiscal 2007 -- stemmed in large part from lower revenues and higher expenditures due to the troubled economy, as well as higher defense spending in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"As bad as 2008 was, the current fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, is widely expected to be far worse. The director of the Congressional Budget Office recently estimated the annual deficit could hit $750 billion given the potential impacts from a possible recession and the financial markets' problems. Some private economists put the 2009 deficit at as much as $1 trillion."