It’s nearly 2,000 pages, and even the tables summarizing its thousands of earmarks are a sight to behold.
The AP is rightly portraying the bill as the porkers’ last hurrah, a kind of monster’s ball for old-guard appropriators — Republican and Democratic alike — “seeking one last victory before tea party-backed GOP insurgents storm Congress intent on ending the good old days of pork-barrel politics.”
“That omnibus bill will be loaded down with earmarks and pork barrel spending, which is a direct — a direct — betrayal of the majority of voters on Nov. 2 who said ‘Stop the earmarking, stop the spending, stop the pork barrel projects,’” protested Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
And Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.) tells National Review Online that while he hasn’t had a chance to review the package, it “sounds like a last gasp effort of a congress that spends too much.”
Indeed, the Senate bill has more pork fat than the House counterpart passed last week, and far worse, it contains funding for Obamacare implementation.
Democrats are already actively courting the handful of Republican votes that will be necessary to overcome the promised filibuster. Retiring Sen. Bob Bennett (R., Utah) has already said he will support it, and Sens. Kit Bond (R., Mo.), George Voinovich (R., Ohio) and Susan Collins (R., Maine) have said they are thinking about doing the same.