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.
Interesting, I jave just posted a thread on my site concering the Omnibus spending bill. This is just as enlightening as the Heritage Foundation article on the Omnibus, itself. It seems Congress has used obstructionist tactics to their advantage. By stonewalling on passing the FY 2008 budget, they have given an open field to the earmark junkies to run amuck and unchecked. If I were a conspiracy theorist of Ron Paul proportions I would almost bet this was planned. But I do not give Congress that much credit in the realm of intelligence.