budgeting pork

"Is 46 hours and 8 minutes enough time to read a 3,417-page bill?"

Apparently it is, because complaining that the final bill hasn't been read when it allocates billions and billions of federal tax dollars for spending is a taboo. I'd want to know where those billions were going. So without more ado than necessary, this is a list of last-minute pork added into the bill without debate.

http://www.house.gov/hensarling/rsc/doc/omnibus_airdropped.pdf

Naturally, many of these are things that we'd need more information on to see what in fact they are for. But $156 Million for Homeland Security in earmarks, not including direct funding seems a bit much. $550 Million in defense earmarks is fairly high as well. Keep in mind these are things that were dropped in last minute, not simply pork that was debated at all and not things that were slipped into the DOT budget, which is the largest pork barrel bill out there usually.

Studying the nature of these earmarked millions, one finds that Congress uses them to essentially buy votes by pointing to a record of 'bringing home the bacon'. WSJ reported that veteran appropriator Rep. John Murtha had "rebuilt [his] hometown on earmarks," noting that "Johnstown's good fortune has come at the expense of taxpayers everywhere else." The point of federal spending is for large public works (like the highway system or overhauling infrastructure in general -- such as replacing fuel distribution setups for fuel cells if and when that happens), and for national issues, like defense or foreign trade. NOT for state matters. If one's home state needs more funds, they should find a way to increase their state revenues. What a tax funded pork system does is essentially create a race to see who can most screw other Congressmen over by allocating funds (that they don't really have, they're in debt up to their eyeballs) to one's home district or state before someone else does the same. The idea being, fuck North Carolina, we here in Ohio need more bacon. That's not the ideal American government and it needs more publicity as to how it got this way.

Continuing a list (these people love lists) was compiled as to reasons to oppose the budget as constructed. -- the list if you can't tell was made by a Republican.
1) 11000 wasteful pork projects. -- 11000, that's all?
2) 24.3 billion in gimmick spending. -- This means that they're playing with numbers to make it look like they're not spending money when they are and this is the total amount of pork spending in it. To say nothing of projects that are essentially wasted dollars that people believe are legitimate.
3) Weakens border security (doesn't fund fencing). --- Fences aren't going to protect our borders. Fund corporate raids and ID theft investigations instead.
4) Cuts national security to fund liberal social programs. -- National security is over-funded and some social programs might make sense.. but I'd like to know which is which.
5) Cuts abstinence funding to fund planned parenthood. -- Good start.
6) cuts labor oversight and funds labor unions. -- ouch. and double ouch. This combined with the attempt to make union ballots open instead of secret is not good news for American labor.
7) Cuts sex offender registry tracking by reducing US Marshals funding. -- I guess that's bad. It'd be easier if criminal databases were linked up nationally with greater ease.
8) Govt can sue English only workplaces. -- There are two problems here. One English only workplaces will not cater to immigrants, and thus lose market share anyway (self-discrimination often hurts the business itself). And two, most immigrants who come here will want to learn at least rudimentary English anyway, or if not themselves then their children will definitely. Concern over migrant workers from Central America isn't a big deal because they seem to work in fields that don't require English (such as actual fields). But the government shouldn't be suing people over their bigotry or stupidity. It's also possible that the 'English-only' business is in a field which would essentially require English anyway, and thus not be a 'discriminatory' tactic.
9) Spends millions to solve energy crisis, in DPRK. -- North Korea? That's a good place to spend money for energy.. I admire our attempts to resolve a 50+ year crisis. But we have millions needed for energy independence here as well. Still, it's probably cheaper to buy them out than to go to war.
10) Increases funding for National Endowment for Arts. -- I'm mixed on this. I don't think if someone can't produce something that people will buy and consume in their lifetime that the government should be a patron of 'arts' and step in. But I also don't see how an artist can easily step from a full-time profession to artistic endeavors without some assistance or several undesirable part time jobs in the meantime.

Another list here
http://omnibusting.heritage.org/2007/12/18/top-10-biggest-problems-with-the-omnibus/
1) Non emergency spending spent as emergency spending. For example
$100 million in emergency funding for presidential security at political conventions
--- Are that many people trying to assassinate the candidates?
$602 million for crop disaster assistance and livestock assistance, in spite of the fact that farmers had record incomes last year. --- we consistently spend billions of federal dollars on farming in this country. It makes no sense.
2) Threat to border security. --- Again, the emphasis is on the stupid fence. America should not be trying to become a gated community.
3) Restricts US energy sources -- not funding oil shale federally --- however what is implied therein is that oil shale is not viable commercially. Which means that technology and research should be done to accommodate that problem and not to subsidize the businesses that undertake the effort to produce it right now.
4) no funding for Iraq. -- This was addressed separately from what I understand.
5) Earmarks - -23 billion dollars worth of them. -- I love the fruit fly research in France for $200k.
6) Corporate welfare --- Technically the corporations are doing useful research on behalf of the government. But it's still pretty wasteful, especially when the program doesn't exist anymore.
7) Budget rescissions and gimmicked appropriations. -- I hate accounting
8) Nobody read the thing. It was passed in 24 hours by the House. And in about 48 hours by the Senate. I dare say that's a bit speedy.
9) Didn't fund nuclear weapons programs -- Who cares, we've got plenty of warheads.. but instead funded a House office building, NEA, AFL-CIO, and so forth. Which also none of these needed money.
10) Exceeded Presidential spending caps. -- Wasn't aware that the President gets to control the budget. Beyond vetoes that is.

To summarize, people whining about the bill mixed up their whining about earmarks with whining that Republicans don't control the earmarks. I'd prefer it if both parties could whine equally about the waste that goes on rather than indulge themselves of it while they can.