The emergency war funding bill that…Obama is expected to sign soon has mushroomed into a catch-all for many lawmakers’ favorite projects.
Obama originally sought $83.5 billion in April, mostly to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. By the time Congress rewrote the bill and passed it last week, the price had jumped to $105.9 billion.
That included money for a new $1 billion “cash for clunkers” auto trade-in program, $2.1 billion for eight C-17 Globemaster aircraft, $5 billion to help the International Monetary Fund and $500 million in earmarks, mostly for Mississippi.
“It’s politics as usual in Washington,” said Marc Goldwein, the policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan budget watchdog group.
Few members of Congress objected to the spending surge. One dissenting Senate voice came from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who criticized the bill as a hodgepodge of favors for special interests and lawmakers eager to win political points back home.
In addition, McCain said, the bill is hardly in the spirit of the budget cutting and pay-as-you-go initiatives that Obama has touted.
“….Obama’s message to Congress was to keep funding focused on the needs of our troops,” McCain said, “and not to use the (bill) to pursue unnecessary spending and to keep earmarks and other extraneous spending out of the legislation.”
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/70488.html
This happens every time Congress passes a funding bill. It always comes with a side of pork attached.
This shit needs to stop. It should be unconstitutional for any President to sign into law bills that have spending riders attached.
THE ONE’s promise of “transparency” and ‘requiring more disclosure and a waiting period for earmarks’, has expired along with the rest of his campaign pledges.