$446.8 Billion Omnibus Spending Bill Clears The Senate

GOP Couldn't Stop Senate Spending Bill


Aided by Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, the Senate tied up some loose ends Saturday when Lieberman cast the crucial 60th vote that helped Democrats put an end to a Republican filibuster on an immense end-of-year spending measure. The bill will boost budgets at the Education and State Departments, among others.

The $1.1 trillion bill, which will be the subject of a final vote Sunday afternoon, finishes off the majority of the year's budget work, with only a Pentagon spending bill remaining. Republicans Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Richard Shelby of Alabama, and Susan Collins of Maine all crossed party lines to advance the bill, while Democrats Evan Bayh of Indiana, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, and Claire McCaskill of Missouri voted "no."






$446b Senate bill clears hurdle

A $446.8 billion omnibus spending bill cleared a last major hurdle Saturday even as Democrats and the White House struggled to find the votes to expand Treasury’s borrowing authority to finance the growing national debt.

Three Senate Republicans joined Democrats in mustering the 60 votes needed to cut off debate, and the leadership hopes to complete action Sunday, sending the measure onto President Barack Obama for his signature.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) is determined to next finish a long-delayed Pentagon budget bill before Christmas—the last major piece of the 2010 budget. Earlier suggestions that defense may be held back have been rejected. But with that train moving forward, House and Senate Democrats admit privately that internal divisions could force them into a short-term interim solution in financing on the debt.

It is the third weekend of the last four that the Senate has been in session, and Saturday’s Senate roll call stretched for more than an hour as Democrats called in their members to get to 60. “Shabbat Shalom” said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, greeting photographers at the Capitol after walking from his home because of the Jewish Sabbath.

The underlying bill, impacting more than a dozen Cabinet departments and major science and regulatory agencies, continues a steady escalation of domestic appropriations, which have seen double-digit growth rates for many agencies under Obama.

It has often resembled a double-time forced march after the appropriations process largely collapsed in the last year of the Bush Administration.

In less than a year’s time, the president will have signed not just his $787 billion stimulus bill but two omnibus packages covering both 2009 and 2010. The Departments of Labor, Education and Health and Human Services, for example, will have gone from about $145 billion — as of last winter — to $163.5 billion for the coming year, a 13% increase worth $18.4 billion.

In the same time frame, much of the accumulated debt now facing the government is still owed to the economy and a structural deficit in place long before Obama took office. But the president’s aggressive spending makes him a target and threatens to split Democrats even as he must hold his party together behind healthcare reform.

The timing could not be more difficult. Treasury is fast approaching the point where it will have exhausted its borrowing authority to manage these liabilities. As part of the spring budget resolution, the House authorized a $925 billion increase in the current $12.1 trillion debt ceiling, but this has stalled in the Senate, and both chambers realize they will have to go back to the well again before the 2010 elections.

This has led to a proposal by the leadership to double up its efforts and in a single stroke raise the ceiling by as much as $1.8 trillion to put the issue behind lawmakers before going before the voters.

It’s a mind-boggling number for many. “We used to think in billions,” complained Senate Republican Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona in Saturday’s floor debate. “Now we’re talking trillions and it’s just being tossed around as if it’s nothing.”

As first outlined by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D—Md.), the leadership’s intent is to attach the debt measure to the same $626 billion defense measure that Inouye wants to see approved before the holidays. Included in that budget is about $128 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan; Democrats were betting that this would create enough political momentum to carry the day — even with the debt provision attached.

But moderates in both chambers are anxious, and given the competing pressures to add jobs-creation funds and other year-end priorities, the ambitious debt strategy is at risk of collapse.

Vice President Joe Biden has stepped in, with Hoyer and Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D—Ill.) taking the lead for their respective chambers. But if a deal is to be salvaged, it could demand more hands-on involvement by the president to bridge differences in his party.


Sources: The Daily Beast, Politico