To all Tea Party members:
I am attaching a link to the upcoming appropriations/government spending bill. This bill is necessary because the Pelosi/Reid Congress failed to pass any of the required appropriations bills that fund our Federal Government. When you open the link, scroll down to the chart at the bottom. Click on any agency (i.e. Dept. of Agric.) earmark chart…. and strap on your seatbelt. You will see page after page of earmarks! There is a chart for each of the twelve appropriations bills. All together, these 12 bills make up the full funding of our government. This bill is necessary because the lame duck Congress passed a simple extension of the funding when they first convened the lame duck in mid-November. The funding expires Saturday, Dec. 18.
http://appropriations.senate.gov/news.cfm
Back story
This Congress made history by being the first Congress EVER to fail to pass through both the House and Senate a single appropriations bill. Typically, Congresses spend most of their summer months considering these various 12 spending bill. As I said, when you marry all 12 bills together you get the full funding of our Federal Government. This giant appropriations bill is called an omnibus approps. bill. When Congress simply wants to extend exact same funding, they pass a Continuing Resolution (CR) which simply continues this funding.
Timing
The Omnibus bill that your are reading via the link will come up in the Senate either in the wee hours tonight, (After midnight) or tomorrow AM. The House passed a simple CR last week. The Senate will begin debating the CR and try to replace the simple funding extension with this omnibus bill. A procedural vote will be teed up to advance this omnibus bill. The cloture vote requires 60 votes to advance. Since the current Senate make-up is 58 (Dems/Indep) and 42 (GOP). The GOP leader has said he will fight this attempt to add this omnibus bill. However, Senator Cochran (R-MS) is joining Senator Inouye (D-HI) in offering this as the Chairman and Ranking on the Senate Approps comm.
I have heard that a few retiring GOP appropriators will join the Senate Democrats and Sen. Cochran and help vote to pass this bill. They are Sen. Bond (R-MO), Sen. Bennett (R-UT), Sen. Voinovich (R-OH).
Additionally, when the Senate begins this debate, either very late tonight or tomorrow AM, Senator DeMint (R-SC) is going to ask that the Senate clerk read the amendment out loud which is permitted in the Senate. The Omnibus approps. amdt. is 1924 pages long. The Senate clerks read about 40 pages an hour give or take the number of charts & graphs. Sen. DeMint is asking the Senate to take this extraordinary step in an effort to educate “We the People” as to this abuse of the legislative process.
Have fun with this and I will continue to give you all updates as things progress.
Keep the faith!
The Honorable Elizabeth B. Letchworth
U.S.Senate Secretary for the Majority-Minority-retired
Senior Advisor Covington & Burling, LLC
Owner-GradeGov.com
“They work for you…remind them!”
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