These people need a long vacation – starting now.
The Senate passed a huge end-of-the-year $1.1 trillion omnibus spending measure Sunday afternoon by a vote of 57-35.
The chamber was forced to work for the second consecutive weekend after talks broke down late Thursday to move the massive spending package and Republicans continued to filibuster it. Senate Democrats overcame the opposition Saturday when the Senate voted 60-34 to end debate and clear the way for a final vote.
The bill, which includes $447 billion in appropriations for a number of cabinet departments and $650 billion for Medicare and Medicaid, combines six of the 12 annual spending bills Congress had been unable to pass separately because of Republican concerns that the measure is over-inflated and exceeds the cost of inflation in its government budget increases.
Republican fiscal hawks Sens. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), as well as centrist Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), were among the Republicans who voted against it. Democratic Sens. Claire McCaskill (Mo.) and Evan Bayh (Ind.) voted against it while GOP Sen. Richard Shelby (Ala.) voted in favor of it.
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele reacted to passage of the omnibus bill by calling on President Barack Obama to veto it.
Fat chance on Obama vetoing the bill. We have a better chance of seeing the cow jump over the moon. Absent from the bill is defense spending. You see, Democrats haven’t spent enough yet, so they’ll us defense spending as a gun to the Republicans’ heads.
The House voted Thursday to approve the half-dozen spending bills lumped into one package. That bill passed 221 to 202, with 28 Democrats joining all 174 Republicans present in opposing it. Republicans griped that the measure was too large and introduced late in the week to avoid public scrutiny, especially considering the nearly 5,000 earmarks worth $3.9 billion it contains.
The package includes the bill providing federal funding for D.C., the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development bill; the Commerce-Justice-State bill; the Labor-HHS-Education bill; the military construction-Veterans Affairs bill; and the State-foreign operations bill.
The only measure excluded was the bill funding the Pentagon. Leaders deliberately left it out so they could use it for a vehicle for other high-priority items the House would like to turn to this week. If Congress fails to pass the defense-spending bill by the end of the week when the current continuing resolution funding the government expires, it will have to pass an extension.
Democratic leaders will likely tack on all or part of the job-creation package Obama has requested, as well as an increase in the federal debt limit. Democrats also would like to pass a six-month extension of unemployment insurance and COBRA benefits.
Up next: health care.
They won’t stop until we’re officially bankrupt and our republic as we know it is gone forever.
Via Memeorandum
It really doesn’t matter. It’s just a question of how much more over our heads lenders will let us go. It used to be OK for us to be indebted to ourselves, but now with insatiable governmental spending for a host of reasons, we are owing other countries, specifically China. Even the communists go capitalist when money is concerned. They get a lot shaky and need collateral when asked to buy up this much debt. They were squeamish on the last round a couple of months ago and chided us for it. They know there isn’t enough productivity in the American populous to pay this off for many decades, so, what will we use as collateral? Real estate or rights (mineral) of course. But will it be something we own like Alaska or something a bit closer to mainland China that there has been a contentious atmosphere over; like Taiwan and the kicker that Japan keeps its nose out of it with no nukes supplied to them. The Democrat leadership is methodically acting on and accomplishing traitorous acts to the demise of the founded Republic. They are making domestic policy decisions that might have far reaching global consequences, none that are good. What to do?
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