Senator John McCain was one of the first of the lawmakers to complain of the way this bill was being put before them. He said:
Mr. President, at 12:15 p.m. this afternoon, my office received a copy of the omnibus appropriations bill. It is 1,924 pages long and contains the funding for all 12 of the annual appropriations bills for a grand total of over $1.1 Trillion. It is important to note that the 1,924 pages is only the legislative language and does not include the thousands of pages of report language which contain the details of the billions of dollars in earmarks and, I’m sure, countless policy riders. In the short time I’ve had to review this massive piece of legislation — I’ve identified approximately 6,488 earmarks totaling nearly $8.3 billion.
As a result of strong Republican criticism, Harry Reid decided to withdraw the bill, which will be taken up by the new Congress with its majority Republican House of Representatives. But it was typical of the Democrats to try to put one over on the Republicans during the last days of the Democrat majority.
Naturally, they had no intention of listening to what the American voters told them on November 2. Their response was to get as much of their agenda enacted as possible while they still had a majority in the lame-duck Congress. And that is why they submitted the Omnibus bill at the last minute, before anyone could have time to read it, analyze it, and make its contents known to the American people.
The Democrats are experts at abusing political power, because they’ve realized for decades that most Americans oppose socialism and would not approve of the progressive agenda if they knew exactly what was in these huge unread bills. For example, practically no one was able to read the 2,000-page ObamaCare bill. And only now are we finding out what’s in it. As Speaker Pelosi said of that monstrosity, the bill had to be passed before we could know what was in it. A congressional leader with that kind of attitude should have been thrown out of office a long time ago..
It was much the same with the gargantuan Omnibus bill, except that Democrats were unable to enact it into law. Here are some of the earmarks it contained: $277,000 for potato pest management in Wisconsin. $246,000 for bovine tuberculosis in Michigan and Minnesota. $522,000 for cranberry and blueberry disease and breeding in New Jersey. $500,000 for oyster safety in Florida. $349,000 for swine waste management in North Carolina. $413,000 for peanut research in Alabama. $247,000 for virus free wine grapes in Washington. $208,000 for beaver management in North Carolina. $165,000 for maple syrup research in Vermont. $235,000 for noxious weed management in Nevada. $300,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Hawaii. $400,000 for solar parking canopies in Kansas. It would take a book the size of an encyclopedia to list all of the 6,488 earmarks.
Wasn’t Obama opposed to earmarks? Wasn’t getting rid of earmarks one of the platforms in his election campaign? But then, liberal Democrats will lie and cheat to achieve their goals. Lying and cheating have always been their modus operandi, but in November American voters decided that they had had enough of it.
And there was even more chicanery being perpetrated at that late hour. Michelle Malkin, the brilliant, fiery columnist, wrote in National Review: “In a last-ditch lame-duck push, eco-lobbyists have been furiously pressuring Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) to pass a monstrous 327-page omnibus government-lands bill crammed with more than 120 separate measures to lock up vast swaths of wilderness areas. Despite the time crunch, Senate Democrats in search of 60 votes are working behind the scenes to buy off green Republicans. House Democrats would then need a two-thirds majority to fast-track the bill to the White House before the GOP takes over on Jan. 5.”
So in addition to the pork laden Omnibus bill, there was this other ominous bill introduced by eco-lobbyists that called for the federal government to grab more of our wilderness land, preventing it from being used by ranchers, miners, or even vacationers. Government ownership of land removes it from private development, which is what the socialists want.
But even this bill had to be withdrawn from consideration during the lame-duck Congress. It will, of course, be re-introduced. But the new Tea Party Congress will no doubt put it in the trash where it belongs.
Meanwhile, Obama was still able to use the lame-duck Congress to get rid of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and round up Senate support of the Start Treaty. Two profoundly important pieces of legislation which should have been considered during a normal session of Congress, than on the heels of a Christmas recess. The socialists realize that they may never get another opportunity to impose their socialist agenda over the United States as they’ve had during the first two years of Obama’s reign. But a good student of Saul Alinsky’s knows when to make a strategic retreat- — much like the communist tactic of two steps forward, one step back, two steps forward, one step back. And it will interesting to see what the RINOs do in 2011 to undercut the Tea Party conservatives.
