The U.S. Senate approved a $636 billion military spending bill on Saturday that funds the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and also includes money to extend jobless aid and Medicare payment rates for two months.
By a vote of 88-10, the Senate approved the bill and sent it to President Barack Obama to sign into law. The House of Representatives passed the bill on Wednesday.
Congress eliminated funding for Lockheed Martin Corp's F-22 fighter jet, as Obama had requested.
But lawmakers funded 10 more Boeing Co C-17 transport planes than the Pentagon had asked for, at a cost of $2.5 billion.
Congress also kept alive over the Pentagon's objections the troubled VH-71 presidential helicopter, made by Lockheed, and an alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter made by General Electric Co and Rolls Royce Group Plc.
The bill includes 1,720 earmarks costing $4.2 billion for lawmakers' pet projects, according to the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. Obama has said he would like to eliminate earmarks, which have figured in several corruption scandals.
The bill also would extend a handful of unrelated programs that otherwise would expire at the end of the year, or have expired already.
Programs extended through February 28, 2010, include:
* Jobless benefits and health-insurance subsidies for the unemployed
* The antiterrorism USA Patriot Act, which gives law enforcement enhanced investigative powers
* Current reimbursement rates for doctors under the national Medicare health insurance program for the elderly, averting a 21 percent pay cut
* Current highway and transit programs
* Loosened regulations designed to encourage small business lending. The Small Business Administration will continue to waive or reduce its loan fees and back 90 percent of the loans it oversees
* A law that allows satellite television providers to retransmit broadcast-TV signals
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BH0QL20091219
More of that hope & change bullshit. Don't you just love how they throw in these special add-on's to a defense bill that has nothing to do with national defense.
By a vote of 88-10, the Senate approved the bill and sent it to President Barack Obama to sign into law. The House of Representatives passed the bill on Wednesday.
Congress eliminated funding for Lockheed Martin Corp's F-22 fighter jet, as Obama had requested.
But lawmakers funded 10 more Boeing Co C-17 transport planes than the Pentagon had asked for, at a cost of $2.5 billion.
Congress also kept alive over the Pentagon's objections the troubled VH-71 presidential helicopter, made by Lockheed, and an alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter made by General Electric Co and Rolls Royce Group Plc.
The bill includes 1,720 earmarks costing $4.2 billion for lawmakers' pet projects, according to the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. Obama has said he would like to eliminate earmarks, which have figured in several corruption scandals.
The bill also would extend a handful of unrelated programs that otherwise would expire at the end of the year, or have expired already.
Programs extended through February 28, 2010, include:
* Jobless benefits and health-insurance subsidies for the unemployed
* The antiterrorism USA Patriot Act, which gives law enforcement enhanced investigative powers
* Current reimbursement rates for doctors under the national Medicare health insurance program for the elderly, averting a 21 percent pay cut
* Current highway and transit programs
* Loosened regulations designed to encourage small business lending. The Small Business Administration will continue to waive or reduce its loan fees and back 90 percent of the loans it oversees
* A law that allows satellite television providers to retransmit broadcast-TV signals
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BH0QL20091219
More of that hope & change bullshit. Don't you just love how they throw in these special add-on's to a defense bill that has nothing to do with national defense.
