The Pelosi House--Rotten to Its Very Foundation
Pentagon budget hits new record in spending bill
By Associated Press | Wednesday, September 24, 2008 |
WASHINGTON - The House today took up a $630 billion-plus spending bill awarding the Pentagon a record budget while giving generous help to U.S. automakers and victims of hurricanes and floods.
The year-end budget measure also would lift a quarter-century ban on oil drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and is flying under the political radar compared with a hugely controversial White House plan to bail out Wall Street.
The bill is fueled by a need to keep the government running past the Oct. 1 start of the 2009 budget year. Until now, Democrats had mostly punted on the need to pass the 12 annual bills funding agency operating budgets, but the 357-page measure released late Tuesday — along with 752 pages of accompanying explanations and tables of previously secret earmarks by lawmakers — would close out about 60 percent of the budget work Congress must pass each year.
That inclu…