Senate Omnibus bill

Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid decided that in order to fund the federal government for the 2011 fiscal year, which started October 1, 2010, that the Senate would try to pass an Omnibus Spending bill that totaled 1,924 pages and would cost the American taxpayer $1.25 trillion. The federal government runs out of money on Saturday, so in order to keep the government running some sort of spending bill must be passed this week.

Much has been made about this piece of legislation introduced by Hawaii Democratic Senator Daniel Inouye, Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. The fact that it is 1,924 pages long, totals in excess of $1.25 trillion and includes by some estimates over 6,500 earmarks doesn’t seem to concern Senator Reid. Did he skip over the election results this past November? Does he seem to forget that the American public don’t want excessive spending, including pork barrel earmarks? Over $8 billion in the recent draft are earmarks. Some of the earmarks are for such needed items as $1 billion for the implementation of ObamaCare.

Senator Jim DeMint has decided that in accordance with Senate rules, that the entire bill will be read aloud. Senate staff anticipates that this endeavor will take approximately forty hours. The federal government runs out of money on Saturday, so that leaves very little time to pass a bill to fund the government. That leaves only a few days for the Senate to conclude its yearly business before the scheduled Christmas and New Years break. A very big vote will have to be taken to see if the bill would get the needed sixty votes to end debate. Currently, there doesn’t seem to be consensus as to whether or not this bill will hit that mark. Anticipating the fact that the bill likely won’t get out of the Senate, the House has passed a continuing resolution that would fund the government at its current levels.

Democrats in the House and Senate have put the country in this position for their lack of work over the past year. Why didn’t the Congress take up any appropriations bills prior to the start of the fiscal year? Why did Congress decide to delay until the very last minute to write a piece of legislation with a cost of over $1 trillion that would keep the government open? Isn’t it the job of Congress to write and pass legislation that would keep open the government? Is it because they know that the American public is opposed to such wasteful spending? That prior to the election and now especially in the wake of the election results, that the Congress would finally listen to their employers and pass a simple bill without all the excess pork barrel spending? The Democrats were afraid to bring this legislation up before the election because they knew that the American public would not like it and would vote against Democrats for supporting this type of wasteful spending. So, following an election defeat, they have decided that in order to keep open the government, they must pass this terrible piece of legislation. Hopefully, the Senate bill will be defeated and a simple continuing resolution will be passed and the next Congress can do its job and pass a budget to keep open the government and fund Maybe they will even fund it at the 2008 levels where the recent massive increase in government spending over the past two years won’t be the base lines. We as tax payers can only hope!