WASHINGTON — Congress is sending President Barack Obama a massive bill funding domestic programs and awarding lawmakers their cherished pet projects after more than a week of partisan debate.
Senators passed the measure by voice vote after voting 62-35 to shut down debate. The White House says Obama will sign the bill. It finishes up last year’s budget business, which stalled as Democrats feuded with former President George W. Bush.
The $410 billion bill encountered unexpected difficulty in the wake of Obama’s economic stimulus bill and a budget plan forecasting a $1.8 trillion deficit for the current budget year.
Republicans seized on Obama’s willingness to sign a bill packed with pet projects after he assailed them as a candidate.
“If it had not been for the stimulus and the budget proposal, it might have been . . . noncontroversial,” said House GOP leader John Boehner of Ohio. “The stimulus bill riled an awful lot of people up. . . . And then the budget proposal comes out.”
Within Democratic ranks, there was relief, not jubilation.
The 1,132-page spending bill has an extraordinary reach, wrapping together nine spending bills to fund the annual operating budgets of every Cabinet department except for Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs.
Described by lawmakers as a $410 billion measure — but officially set by the Congressional Budget Office at $408 billion because of technicalities involving heating subsidies for the poor — the bill was written mostly over the course of last year, with support from key Republicans such as Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the No. 3 Senate Republican.
But bipartisan support for the bill evaporated after projected deficits quadrupled and Obama’s economic recovery bill left many of the same spending accounts swimming in cash. Some Republicans noted that the government has been functioning just fine for more than five months at last year’s funding levels.
“Why not go back to 2008 levels,” said Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas. “That would be a responsible action that might start giving confidence to the American people.”
The bill contains 7,991 pet projects totaling $5.5 billion, according to calculations by the Republican staff of the House Appropriations Committee.
Among the many earmarks are $485,000 for a boarding school for at-risk native students in western Alaska and $1.2 million for Helen Keller International so the nonprofit can provide eyeglasses to students with poor vision.
Obama is set to announce an overhaul of the earmark process today.
