And You Wonder Why The Defense Budget Is So Big

I get so tired of liberals and Democrats screaming about how much we spend on defense, when a large part of the defense budget they approve is not defense related at all and contains items the defense department doesn't want.

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.

Nancy and The House Spend $630B

While you weren't watching and while most of congress was busy with other things Nancy and her cronies in the Democrat party threw together a budget bill for $630B, which contains $19.1B in earmarks into a budget bill that had to be approved or else government would have ground to a halt. At this point what is the downside of our government grinding to a halt?

The 2008 budget year ended yesterday, but Congress hasn't approved a single one of a dozen annual appropriations bills needed to keep the federal government functioning on a day-to-day basis. Hence the $630 billion stop-gap measure, nearly the size of the failed Wall Street bailout. It passed the House on a 370-68 vote even though, as Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., candidly admitted, "very few people have any idea what's in it." Cornered House members had less than 24 hours to review the 357-page bill and 752 pages of accompanying material before being forced to either pass it - or shut down most of the federal government today.

One thing the continuing resolution is full of is earmarks, none of which were debated or voted on in public. The House Budget Committee's final tally is 2,760 earmarks totaling $19.1 billion (including presidential requests). None were publicly vetted through the regular legislative process or even posted on the committee's web site prior to the vote. And, since this temporary spending bill expires in five months, the whole dysfunctional process will begin anew in March – unless there’s a major shakeup of Congress in November.

When does it end? Do all of these lawmakers suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and simply can't resist putting earmarks into everything?
For even more earmark craziness go here and look at the growing list of earmarks being put into the Senate version of the finance bailout package.