Lumps of Coal for Congress

After a year of spending their time on non-essential business Congress actually did some real work yesterday, but there is much they left town without doing. What earmarks are in these? What waste? Who knows?

Congress is much more responsible than the president is for the domestic direction of this country – for all the pandering of the current crop of presidential candidates, they really can’t do much for or against change without good legislation from congress, which is about as likely as Polar bears greeting the dawn in Antarctica.

By dumping this all the day before Christmas they have guaranteed there will be only light review if any. From PR Newswire:

In a late-year flurry, Congress passed many bills last week. Among others, Congress passed an all-in-one spending bill. It combined eleven spending bills and additional spending for the Iraq war into one.

H.R. 2764, now called the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008, is the bill. Its cost per U.S. family is a little over $9,400, about $720 of which is for the additional military spending.

H.R. 2764

The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008

Costs $9,439.54 per family

What People Think: 28% For, 72% Against

http://www.washingtonwatch.com/bills/show/110_HR_2764.html

Congress also passed “AMT reform.” The Alternative Minimum Tax originally affected only the very rich, but it was beginning to threaten middle class taxpayers.

The article goes on to cover the other bills they passed beyond the omnibus one above, it was a flurry of sloppy crammed legislation without precedent.