The New York Post points out more pork stuffed into this bill:
Among the recipients of federal largesse is the Polynesian Voyaging Society of Honolulu, which got a $238,000 "earmark" in the bill.
The group organizes sea voyages in ancient-style sailing canoes like the ones that first brought settlers to Hawaii.
The sailing club has a powerful wind at its back in the person of Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
The bill also has a whopping 8 percent increase over last year for the numerous federal agencies it funds.
New York got its share of earmarks, among them $475,000 to "improve and expand" the Italian American Museum in Little Italy.
The project was pushed by New York Reps. Gary Ackerman and Jerrold Nadler. The latter touted it, among other earmarks, on his Web site.
Nadler also announced $4.5 million for new park development in Manhattan.
Uncle Sam's generosity extends upstate, where there's $950,000 to convert a railroad bridge over the Hudson River into a walkway in Poughkeepsie.
Earmarks totaled at least $3.8 billion - a figure used by the House Appropriations Committee.
But the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense calculates that there are an astonishing 8,570 earmarks at a cost of $7.7 billion.
The bill, which critics slammed as larded with pork, has big bucks to combat putrid stenches in the heartland, with $1.7 million for "Swine Odor and Manure Management Research."
That's on top of $1.9 million in each of the last two years, or nearly $6 million over the last three years.
The swine research center, at Iowa State University in Ames, got funds through the Agricultural Research Service, and aims to improve the smell of animals and the lagoons where waste is stored.
There's funding for mosquito trapping in Gainesville, Fla. - requested by Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut. The research deals with the West Nile virus, and was funded at $1.2 million in each of the last two years.
Isn't it amazing how our politicians vote to spend tax payer dollars?
Better yet, CQ Politics is quick to point out that Barack Obama, who promised not to seek any earmarks, has some pork of his own in this bill.
President Obama, who took a no-earmark pledge on the campaign trail, is listed as one of dozens of cosponsors of a $7.7 million set-aside in the fiscal 2009 omnibus spending bill (HR 1105) passed by the House on Wednesday.
The bill is an accumulation of leftovers from 2008 — spending measures that weren’t enacted before the 110th Congress expired. Lawmakers who wanted money for local projects in those bills were required to submit their requests many months ago, while Obama was still a senator. It’s moving through Congress now because a temporary extension of funds to run the government will run out after March 6.
Obama’s name jumps out on a list of many earmark cosponsors because he and his staff have been so emphatic about his no-earmark stance.
“I think you can take one sign of the president’s seriousness on this that there aren’t any from him that I know of in that omnibus largely because there weren’t any that were requested last year,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday.
The $7.7 million earmark — for Tribally Controlled Postsecondary Vocational Institutions — is cosponsored by a long list of other members of both chambers. The program appeared in Senate report language last year but its sponsors were not identified at that time.
Overall, the president, vice president, the White House chief of staff and the four Cabinet secretaries who were in Congress last year show up in the records of the House and Senate Appropriations committees as the sponsors or cosponsors of hundreds of millions of dollars in pet projects in the $410 billion spending bill.
It would be amusing if they were only spending their own money, not so much when they are spending yours too huh?
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