Reports
Jonathan Karl of ABC News:
The House Appropriations Committee just posted its $410 billion
2009 Omnibus spending bill. It's a doozy. This is
the bill that will fund the government's operations until the
end of the fiscal year. It's larded with thousands (so
many, I can't count them all yet) of earmarks and adds up an
increase in overall discretionary spending of more than 8
percent, the biggest one year increase since 1978 (with the
exception of the spending boost after the September 11
attacks).
And this is a bi-partisan feeding frenzy. Roughly 40
percent of the money for earmarks (i.e. pet projects inserted
by individual lawmakers) have been inserted by Republicans.
Don't these people ever learn?
About the Author
Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and the Senior Fellow in International Religious Persecution at the Institute on Religion and Public Policy. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Beyond Good Intentions: A Biblical View of Politics (Crossway).
