Under the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee’s “Affordable Health Choices Act,” local governments can apply for “community transformation” grants to build jungle gyms, sidewalks, bicycle paths, and grocery stores, to install streetlights, and to establish new farmers’ markets.

The dollar amount of these grants, and of the total “community transformation” earmark program, is left to the discretion of the Obama administration.

Cities can also apply for “community makeover” grants, which can provide them with up to $10 per resident in taxpayer dollars for “beautifying streets.”

Sen. Tom Coburn, MD (R-OK) sponsored an amendment to the HELP Committee bill that would have prevented any funds it made available from being used “to build, develop, or maintain sidewalks, parks, bike paths, or street lights.” The amendment was defeated by party-line vote.

The “Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009,” the House of Representatives’ health overhaul legislation, also contains an earmark for these grants. The House bill sets the amount available for their funding at $1.6 billion.

Sources: “Affordable Health Choices Act,” Title III, Subtitle C
HR 3200, § 3151

Last Friday, ten House Republican leaders sent a letter to President Barack Obama. In it, they offered to work across party lines and Congressional divisions with the new president to achieve the latter’s stated commitment “to fiscal transparency and accountability and ensuring that [all] spending commitments are paid for without burdening our children and grandchildren with excessive debt,” and to “slash[ing] earmarks to no greater than 1994 levels and ensur[ing] all spending decisions are open to the public.”

The Republican leaders wrote:

In keeping with these pledges to the American people, we urge you to veto the so-called “omnibus” spending bill passed this week if the Senate fails to reject it.

Like the trillion-dollar “stimulus” spending bill that was rushed through Congress without any Member having read it, the $410 billion legislation passed this week openly defies your commendable objectives of fiscal transparency and accountability. It contains nearly 9,000 “airdropped” earmarks, most of which were not even considered in committee let alone on the House floor as is routine — compared to roughly 4,000 in 1994. …

Read More →

Update: An emailer points out that the 54 Rs and Ds who abstained from voting on the motion must have made President Obama, with his history of over 100 “present” votes in the Illinois state legislature, very proud.

Minority Leader John Boehner’s Motion to Recommit, which would have frozen federal spending at current levels and stripped the 9,000 un-reviewed earmarks from the $410,000,000,000.00 omnibus spending bill currently working its way through Congress, was voted down 160-218 this afternoon.

Every Republican who voted did so in support of the measure, as did 8 Democrats (Reps. Altmire, Childers, Donnelly, Ellsworth, Giffords, Minnick, Mitchell and Nye; h/t Connie Hair at HE for the names).

26 Republicans and 28 Democrats abstained from voting on the motion altogether.

The 26 Republicans who abstained from voting on this motion are listed below the fold. Is your Congressman one of them?

Read More →

We’ve received word that House Republicans plan to force a vote this morning on a spending freeze that would lock in federal spending at current levels and strip the $410,000,000,000.00 “omnibus” spending bill of all 9,000 “un-scrutinized earmarks.”

Though certain to fail, this is another laudable move from a GOP minority that unanimously opposed the nearly $1,000,000,000,000.00 in pork-barrel waste that made up President Obama’s “stimulus” package.

GOP leaders have also called on Obama to veto the omnibus when it passes the Democrat-led legislature, but the likelihood of the man who already signed that $1,000,000,000,000.00 spending bill (while declaring the pork-laden monstrosity “free of earmarks”) is, in my estimation, a bit less than the likelihood of his actually taking up Rush Limbaugh on the latter’s offer of a public debate.

Update: The AP says the following:

The top Republican in the House is seizing on the latest spike in unemployment to call for a freeze on government spending and to urge President Barack Obama to veto a $410 billion spending bill.

Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the jump in unemployment to 8.1 percent and the loss of 651,000 jobs in February is a sign of a worsening recession that demands better solutions from both parties.

Boehner criticized the spending bill as chocked full of wasteful, pork-barrel projects. The Senate postponed a vote on the bill until Monday amid the criticism.

Boehner said he hoped Obama would veto the bill. He urged the president to work with House Republicans to impose a spending freeze until the end of this fiscal year.

Update 2: Boehner’s office had the following to say about the Motion to Recommit:

Read More →

From Byron York at NRO:

Just got off the phone with an influential Republican senator. I asked how things stood with the stimulus, and he answered instantly, “They’ve cut a deal with three of our guys. They’re delaying us from offering amendments. I suspect that as soon as they’ve got it written, they will offer it as an amendment, vote on it, and that will be it.” He didn’t have details on what the deal might be, but most Republicans seem to suspect it will involve relatively small cuts — and very little change in the price tag of the bill from the House version — that will be touted as a major bipartisan compromise. My senator suspects — hopes? — that no more than four Republicans will vote for the bill.

The entire House GOP managed to get the simple concept that the Democrats should be made to own every single one of their policy prescriptions wholesale. Unfortunately, there are some in the Senate who are desperately clinging to the notion that the American people don’t care how bad the legislation coming out of DC is as long as it’s “bipartisan.” This leads them to think the GOP will be made to look better if we provide “bipartisan” cover for far-left policies, as they are an example of government doing the something, anything! the American people supposedly want.

This is exactly the kind of idiotic behavior that put the GOP in the near-super minority in the first place: acting like Democrat-lites and going along with the charade of “bipartisanship” under the sorely mistaken conception that the American people want something, anything! done by Congress, regardless what that something, anything! may be or do.

There haven’t been any names officially attached to the report of the GOP Senate cave-in, but I’d strongly suggest every one of us give a call to Senators Snowe, Collins, Specter, and Voinovichand tell them not to give cover to the party that was elected to run Washington as a sole proprietorship — especially when it comes to sinking every one of us a trillion dollars further into debt .

Read More →