The bill includes 1,720 earmarks costing $4.2 billion for lawmakers' pet projects, according to the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. Obama has said he would like to eliminate earmarks, which have figured in several corruption scandals.
The bill also would extend a handful of unrelated programs that otherwise would expire at the end of the year, or have expired already.
Programs extended through February 28, 2010, include:
* Jobless benefits and health-insurance subsidies for the unemployed
* The antiterrorism USA Patriot Act, which gives law enforcement enhanced investigative powers
* Current reimbursement rates for doctors under the national Medicare health insurance program for the elderly, averting a 21 percent pay cut
* Current highway and transit programs
* Loosened regulations designed to encourage small business lending. The Small Business Administration will continue to waive or reduce its loan fees and back 90 percent of the loans it oversees
* A law that allows satellite television providers to retransmit broadcast-TV signals
The next time some liberal starts spouting off about how much we spend on defense that could be used for other things like flowers on teachers desks and such just point them to this type of news.
Congress also kept alive over the Pentagon's objections the troubled VH-71 presidential helicopter, made by Lockheed, and an alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter made by General Electric Co and Rolls Royce Group Plc.
That damn helicopter just won't go away.
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