Omnibus 2009: Federal greed and skewed foreign policy

by Roger King

H.R. 1105, better known as the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009, contains a total of 9 appropriations bills with a price tag of $410 billion. Investor's Business Daily said this amounts to an increase of 8% over last year, making it the largest discretionary spending increase since Jimmy Carter. The Democrats waited nearly 5 months to finish writing this bill, knowing that President Bush would refuse to sign it with the provisions they wanted.

This bill passed the House, 245 to 178, and by a 62 to 35 vote in the Senate on a mostly partisan vote. Spending as a percentage of the GDP has increased dramatically this year. Few Americans are aware of the level of spending the bill contained; even fewer are aware of what is on the budget for the future.

Chart from ‘A New Era of Responsibility’ aka the 'Obese Federal Budget' containing even more dollars for one of the biggest money pits in American history—the US Dept.of Education. You could zero out that department and you would not see a single loss in educational quality in public schools. Legislators and the president are clueless on public schools—their kids usually go to private schools.Click the photo to read the budget at the US government website.
Caving in to Castro, denying vouchers to schoolchildren, more $ for Gaza 
Changes are in store for our relations with Cuba, a country notorious for not paying its bills. The US has required Cuba to pay in advance for the $780 million in agricultural products we sell them each year. This appropriations bill drops that requirement for Cuba to pay in advance. Additionally, Americans with families in Cuba will be able to visit annually instead of every three years.

What makes this more interesting is last week’s purge of approximately 20 regime officials by Raul Castro. This is not only the biggest purge in 20 years, but Cuba's youngest and most reform-oriented minds were replaced with die-hard Stalinists. It is even more interesting since the Democratic U.S. Congress refused to give preferred trading status to Colombia, one of our allies. Instead they are willing to help a communist country that just allegedly murdered 20 top officials instead of helping a country that has been one of our staunchest allies.

The Pelosi-crafted FY09 budget kills funding for the DC voucher program next year. This program provides almost 2,000 students a $7,500 voucher to assist parents with costs of private schools. The DC public schools not only get an F in education but are dangerous. For every 4 kids that sign up, only one slot is available through the voucher program.. It should be a no-brainer for Washington—these children should have a chance at a better education. Sadly enough, Democrats felt the need to kill this program so the teachers unions and government schools could maintain their stranglehold on our children's education.

Taxpayers are being tapped to give $900 million for rebuilding Gaza; the U.S. has already contributed billions for that purpose. Much of this will very likely end up in the pockets of radical Hamas in much the same way Hamas stole UN supplies meant for Palestinian refugees. Strangely, there was no money for the damage Hamas inflicted on Israel with their rockets and bulldozer attacks.

Trade Wars
Congress added a provision that would prevent long-haul freight trucks based in Mexico from operating in the United States. This action is completely out of compliance with our NAFTA agreements and could lead to a major trade wars which would be devastating to our already ailing economy. By blocking Mexican trucks from entering the US, we may initially save jobs. However, if Mexico retaliates with trade restrictions of their own we would lose US jobs. Why? Since we can't export the products associated with any Mexican trade restrictions, our companies would not have as much demand for their products. As demand drops the resulting drop in production would force layoffs.

E-Verify
E-verify is an online system where employers can compare information given by the employee with various government databases. This system is designed to help prevent illegal aliens from taking jobs Americans would otherwise hold. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) attempted to pass amendment 604 that would have added E-verify to the bill. However, in what appears to be an attempt to secure potential voters, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) blocked a vote.

Greenhouse Gases
Projects that emit greenhouse gases anywhere in the U.S. could be blocked under a Democratic proposal because of potential harm to endangered species. This section of the bill would allow President Obama to block projects that might add to global warming, even if they are outside of the polar bear habitat for instance. As a result, the Obama administration could regulate any emitter of greenhouse gases anywhere in the U.S. to prevent the melting of polar-bear habitat. Regardless of your belief in man- made global warming, these actions would kill jobs by either stopping projects or making products too expense for the consumer, thereby causing more layoffs.

The Interior and Commerce secretaries can now expand the input from Federal scientists in endangered species decisions, bar greenhouse gases from being restricted to protect polar bears from global warming, and disallow oil and gas drilling to continue near the habitat of the bears. The effects of this would very likely be greater restrictions on greenhouse gases throughout the economy, less energy exploration and expanded protections of endangered species at the expense of our economy and our land and personal rights.

Funding Increases, federal greed 
Although President Barack Obama speaks of a need for everyone to sacrifice, it evidently doesn't apply to Congress. Legislative branch operations in Congress will receive an 11% increase to be used for Congress to run their offices. This increase is almost three times last year's 4% increase and the rate of inflation in 2008. So the operations in Congress will now total $4.4 billion. As a final insult Senate voted to keep automatic pay raises. Some other spending increases include $66.5 billion for education, a 7 percent increase over 2008 levels; $27 billion for energy, including a $765 million, a 54 percent hike for advanced energy research; and $41.5 billion for Housing and Urban Development, including $24.5 billion for low-income and American Indian housing.

“We need earmark reform," Obama said during a presidential debate. "And when I'm president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely." One interesting point is that Obama actually has an earmark in this bill from his time in Senate. His name was removed from the earmark but the earmark remained. As a senator, Obama floated nearly $1 billion in earmarks during his brief term  before beginning to campaign for president.

Although this bill contains a 5% decrease in earmark spending from all of last year, there are still approximately 8,570 earmarks totaling $7.7 billion. Earmarks are pretty evenly split at about 60% Democratic and 40% Republican, so shame on both.

For more information about how the Democrats plan to pay for spending increases, visit The Heritage Foundation’s The $1.4 Trillion Obama Tax Increase and read The Obama Rosetta Stone at The Wall Street Journal.