Sen. Inouye filed the FY 2011 omnibus yesterday. Text and earmark information can be found on the Appropriations website. After reading the pro-life concerns below you will understand why FRC Action will be scoring any votes on the Omnibus in our annual scorecard.
It has 1,924 pages, is estimated to cost $1.267 TRILLION and has over 6,000 earmarks from both the House and the Senate that total about $8 billion. The bill spends an average of $575.13 million per page.
In the “we just don’t get it file” the Democrats, crafting this with little to no input from Republicans, included more than $1 billion in funding for the unconstitutional Obamacare in the Omnibus. The spending includes a $750 million from the Prevention and Public Health Fund for a “slush fund” that has little oversight and can be easily accessed by organizations that perform abortions.
Other pro-life concerns include:
- Taxpayer funds can be used for abortions in the District of Columbia (a holdover from last year)
- $710 million for “international population programming” (up from $648 m last year and up from $440 in FY07). Under the Obama Administration this money is most likely to be directed towards organizations that perform abortions as well as that lobby and seek to undermine against pro-life laws in other countries.
- Creates Offices of Women’s Issues at State and USAID
- Gender-based violence program to “strengthen the capacity of nongovernmental organizations to address such violence” which includes references to UN Security Council resolutions 1820 and 1888 which endorse CEDAW
- Title X also is up to $327 million, up from $317 FY10, and $307 FY09.
Some of the earmarks (you can check out the Appropriations website yourself) include:
The bill includes $18 million for two nonprofits associated with deceased Democrats, the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and Rep. John P. Murtha; $349,000 for swine waste management in North Carolina; and $6 million for a rural Iowa school program named after Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). I will assume neither Senator Kennedy or Representative Murtha inserted those earmarks personally.
The Washington Post reports that “the legislation includes provisions requested this year by [Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell, including $650,000 for a genetic technology center at the University of Kentucky.” This is likely a lame attempt by the Democrats to smear some of the Republicans. While the Minority Leader might have at one time requested the money, he did not put it in the Omnibus nor does he support the overall bill.
Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) “tweeted” (@SenJohnMcCain) his Top Ten Pork Barrel projects last night (comments are my own)
#10. $247,000 – Virus free wine grapes in Washington State [How does that saying go? Wine before virus infested liquor, never sicker?]
#9. $413,000 – Peanut research in Alabama [How about some legumes y’all?]
#8. $125,000 for fishery equipment for the Guam Fishermen’s Cooperative Association, Hagatna, Guam. [Teach a man to fish he eats for a day, buy all his equipment with taxpayer money and then none of us can eat.]
#7. $349,000 – Swine waste management in North Carolina [Pork helping pork!]
#6. $400,000 for solar parking canopies and plug-in electric stations in Kansas [They just elected Sam Brownback as Governor – I’d say they already “see the light”!]
#5. $165,000 for maple syrup research in Vermont [Because if there is one state that needs assistance to understand maple syrup it is Vermont]
#4. $522,000 for cranberry and blueberry disease and breeding in New Jersey [Isn’t this cross breeding how we ended up with MTV’s “Jersey Shore”?]
#3. $246,000 for bovine tuberculosis in Michigan and Minnesota [Because nothing is worse than a cow with four stomachs with a tummy ache!]
#2. $235,000 for noxious weed management in Nevada [I’m not sure, but I think there is an insult to Harry Reid somewhere in there]
#1. $300,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Hawaii [Hawaii? Why do I smell a congressional junket checking this out in the future?]