The federal government's massive ripoff of the American taxpayer continues. The Senate and House have both passed the $1.1 trillion Omnibus spending bill for 2010, and President Obama is expected to sign it. The bill raises spending by about 10% over last year, even though the last time I checked, the inflation rate for this year was negative, as the economy shrunk during the recession. Like I said in a recent post titled 'A Recession-Proof Industry,' there's no recession in Washington D.C.
The spending bill contains 5,000 earmarks in the amount of $3.9 billion, naturally. That might not sound like a lot, relatively speaking, until you consider that the spending portion of Obama's stimulus package (those so-called shovel-ready projects) were basically nothing but thousands of earmark projects bundled together. One count had 9,000 earmarks in the stimulus bill, even though the White House laughably claimed there were none. The White House did this in the typical government way. They simply called the earmark projects something else.
One notable earmark in the 2010 Omnibus spending bill is $2.7 million to study surgery in outer space. Meet George Jetson. There is seemingly no end to the ways Congress can dream up to waste our money.
The bill passed the Senate by a vote of 57-35 along party lines. Democrats were for the huge spending increases, and Republicans were against them. Here are the exceptions:
Democrats Evan Bayh of Indiana, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Claire McCaskill of Missouri voted against the bill. Republican Sens. Thad Cochran of Missouri, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Richard Shelby of Alabama voted for it.
Kudos to Bayh, Feingold, and McCaskill. I spit upon Cochran, Collins, Snowe, Shelby, and the rest of the Democrats.
The spending bill puts America on track for a $1.5 trillion deficit for 2010, not that the big spenders on Capitol Hill give a damn. They'll be voting soon to raise the debt ceiling by $2 trillion, because we are about to exceed the current $12.1 trillion limit, which begs the question, what good is a debt ceiling if they can keep raising it time and again ? That isn't a ceiling. It's more like an elevator to nowhere.
Federal employees also get a 2% raise, because the poor dears only make $30,000 per year more than their private sector counterparts already. Without that 2% raise, the federal employees might have to eat hamburger instead of steak, or endure something equally horrid.
In the past I have compared government spending to that of drunken sailors. I now realize how wrong I was to say that. I apologize to all drunken sailors. When drunken sailors run out of money, they stop spending. When the government runs out of money, they step up the pace and spend even more.
Unless one of the government earmarks is used to perfect alchemy (turn lead into gold), we are in deep doo-doo. It's time to start thinking outside the box……..hey, I have an idea. Let's sell California to China to pay off the $800 billion we owe the Chi-coms. Chinafornia has kind of a nice ring to it, and then the Left Coast liberals can live in the marxist utopia they dream about (which would turn them into conservatives in about two seconds).
Or maybe the alchemy thing. Oh wait, I almost forgot. Obama is the green President. Instead of using lead, we'll have to turn broccoli into gold. It's more environmentally friendly. Better yet, let's turn CO2 into gold !!!! Jackpot !!! I nominate myself to be the Alchemy Czar.
Hey Congress, I need a $30 billion budget, pronto, and see if you can track down Merlin for me.
