Senate Republicans Stall Passage of Economy Bill

By Jeralyn, Section Legislation
Posted on Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 08:15:00 AM EST
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Senate Republicans last night stalled the passage of the Omnibus Appropriations Act.

Senate Republicans, demanding the right to try to change a huge spending bill, forced Democrats on Thursday night to put off a final vote on the measure until next week. The surprise development will force Congress to pass a stopgap funding bill to avoid a partial shutdown of the government.

...Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., canceled the vote, saying he was one vote short of the 60 needed to close debate and free the bill for President Barack Obama's signature.

The Republicans insisted on voting on their amendments, all of which were expected to fail. Thanks to the Senate's Twitter page, you can view the votes. And here at GovTrack, you can click through to the Amendments. [More...]

The huge, 1,132-page spending bill awards big increases to domestic programs and is stuffed with pet projects sought by lawmakers in both parties. The measure 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.

....And, to the embarrassment of Obama — who promised during last year's campaign to force Congress to curb its pork-barrel ways — the bill contains 7,991 pet projects totaling $5.5 billion, according to calculations by the GOP staff of the House Appropriations Committee.

Among the earmarks:

There's $190,000 for the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyo., $238,000 to fund a deep-sea voyaging program for native Hawaiian youth, agricultural research projects, and grants to local police departments, among many others.

....Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa...backed $1.7 million for pig odor research. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., promised $3.8 million to preserve and redevelop part of old Tiger Stadium to help revitalize a distressed area of Detroit.

We're in a recession bordering on a depression and Harkin wants money for pig odor research?

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Senate Republicans Stall Passage of Economy Bill | 24 comments (24 topical)

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Pig odor research! (5.00 / 7) (#4)
by Steve M on Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 02:17:45 AM EST

I'd suggest that anyone try living downwind from a hog farm and then say gosh, how dare we spend 0.02% of this spending bill on researching technology to control pig odor!

If there were an industry that pumped all sorts of pollutants into the air, would we see it as a waste of money to research methods for limiting that pollution? But somehow, because pigs are involved, nyuk nyuk what a goofy earmark, let's all laugh at it. As a native Midwesterner I'm particularly sensitive to the way the Beltway journalists snicker at anything having to do with agriculture.

Jeralyn, I ask this seriously, did you spend even a moment trying to find out what "pig odor research" is all about before you wrote this post mocking it? Because this is how we end up getting played for fools by the earmark-obsessed John McCain's of the world. Here's the first Google hit on "pig odor research":

But what on earth is pig odor research? To find out, we spoke with Jacek Koziel, an agricultural engineer who specializes in livestock odor at Iowa State University and who has helped the ARS team quantify odors for their experiments varying the pig's diet...
Why is pig odor a problem?
Typically, pig odor is a localized air quality problem. We usually just have low concentrations of these potent odorous gases such as p-cresol, and those are not necessarily immediately dangerous to our health. However, odor problems are often a starting point for litigation. This is a real problem for many farmers large and small, but small operations in particular can go out of business because of this litigation. This is a real issue to many people. The need to do fundamental research on odor, on controlling odor, and on gaseous dust emissions from livestock is still there. There's no question about it.

So okay, let's put those researchers out of a job, that should help fix the economy. And let's watch some small hog farmers get put out of business too, because they don't have the technology to control the odor from their operations. That should help the economy even more. And then we can all pat ourselves on the back for stopping that wasteful earmark that would have cost every man, woman and child in the U.S. nearly half a penny.

I respectfully suggest that if 1% of a spending bill consists of earmarks, it is not "stuffed with pet projects" according to any reasonable understanding of the English language. And I further suggest that no one should be awarded a good-government merit badge for clucking over funny-sounding programs that comprise 1% of a bill as the other 99% goes completely ignored. We can be better than this.

Thanks (5.00 / 1) (#8)
by Dr Molly on Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 06:04:02 AM EST

You're exactly right - it is right out of the right-wing playbook to pull something out of a bill out of context and mock it (usually something scientific) in order to game the process. Remember Proxmire's golden fleece awards? Now apparently it's Grassley's job to run around screaming out-of-context nonsense to mock research spending, etc. Remember Palin's talking points about funding for fruit flies? McCain and the grizzly bears? Etc. Oldest trick in the book. Now, it's pig odor.

I wish they'd pass the darn bill so that those of us in charge of obligating the funds and getting the money flowing could get to work.

[ Parent ]

Proxmire once awared the Golden Fleece (5.00 / 3) (#9)
by BernieO on Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 07:04:23 AM EST

to research that involved training animals to avoid a shock (horses I think). It sounded silly, but was really part of the basic research into learned helplessness that has led to the most effective therapy we have for depression and other disorders like OCD, anxiety, etc.

I wish people would learn to suspend judgment when they hear things like this that sound ridiculous until they get more info.

[ Parent ]

By the way (none / 0) (#12)
by Steve M on Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 08:13:22 AM EST

Someone should ask Grassley's opinion on pig odor research!

[ Parent ]

: Ha. (none / 0) (#18)
by oculus on Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 10:12:29 AM EST

[ Parent ]

You're right, Steve M. (5.00 / 2) (#10)
by snstara on Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 07:23:25 AM EST

I am not sure where I read this - it could have been the Daily Howler - but this very subject was brought up as an example of 'pork' on Jack Cafferty's program. Then viewers began responding to his talking points, 'schooling' Cafferty on what a problem the odor and manure have become in many communities downwind (and downstream) of vast hog farms. These viewers adamantly supported research that might turn these current pollutants into something useful.

This is a 'news' story obviously skewed to provoke knee-jerk anger at alleged 'pork' or 'waste'. And I'm kind of tired of being manipulated by the know-nothings hopping on that high-speed train from LA to the brothels in NV, or wherever.

[ Parent ]

Timing and Symbolism are... (none / 0) (#5)
by EL seattle on Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 02:40:15 AM EST

... important. It's basic salesmanship. The pig odor research will be as worthy of attention six months from now as it was two years ago. Right now I think it's a distraction. It takes the eye off the target and allows the discussion to be detoured.

Personally, I'd love to see a national research program for all livetock-related odor. Not just pigs, but cattle and chickens and any other critter that causes organic pollutants that befoul the neighborhood. That might even be an easier sell to the American public than pig-centered research.

I've never lived near a pig farm, but when I was a kid I spent part of a hot summer near a town called Greeley, which a had a teensy little bit of a livestock aroma at the time. I wonder if that's gotten better in the years since then?

[ Parent ]

: What I am saying (5.00 / 5) (#6)
by Steve M on Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 02:59:37 AM EST

is that people who are smart enough to know better should know better.
If we want to enable the media's obsession with insignificant line-items by fretting over them endlessly, that's our right, but I don't think it's very productive.
If we want to treat it like a major embarrassment because John McCain or Bobby Jindal made fun of the name of some insignificant earmark, then I guess we can be embarrassed.
Hope you don't live near that volcano that we won't be monitoring because it was too easy a project to make fun of. Hope you weren't counting on that government research grant to keep your job at the university. But even if you weren't, someone was. I can accept a half-penny worth of political embarrassment so that their kids have food on the table and their industry can advance its scientific knowledge.

[ Parent ]

Do the projects contribute to the economy? (5.00 / 2) (#7)
by Cynicor on Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 05:31:18 AM EST

If you're talking about stimulus, it really doesn't matter where the money goes. A dollar put into the economy helps boost the economy by $1 whether it's spent on a museum or volcano monitoring or farm research.

More importantly, it's showing that their Sore Loserman strategy of delaying Franken's seating in the Senate is working in the short term.

If that (none / 0) (#19)
by Wile ECoyote on Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 10:20:39 AM EST

is true, then why not let the taxpayer keep their money and spend it the way they want. You can donate to pig odor research if you choose.

[ Parent ]

Because (5.00 / 3) (#20)
by Steve M on Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 10:54:41 AM EST

public goods like scientific research and abatement of pollution are always going to be undervalued if left up to the free market. Not to mention the transaction costs of funding these projects any other way.

[ Parent ]

so you are (none / 0) (#21)
by Wile ECoyote on Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 12:34:00 PM EST

telling me that Intel and AMD chips are slower, more behind the times than chips developed by the US gov't would be? Seems to me that the private sector having a financial stake in it and having to perform to get stakeholders is a better way to go. If the gov't fails at scientific research, who cares, the taxpayer picks up the tab.

[ Parent ]

: Different question (none / 0) (#24)
by Steve M on Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 02:30:23 PM EST

Once technology develops to a point where there are profitable commercial applications, of course the market will do just fine in developing that technology. But you didn't ask about researching better microchips, you asked about research into abating pollution. Basic scientific research and public goods will always be undervalued by the market.

[ Parent ]

Someone can correct me if (5.00 / 1) (#11)
by Anne on Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 07:24:48 AM EST

I'm wrong, but this was a bill held over from the prior Congress, correct? And even though that Congress had a Demcoratic majority, it was so slim - in the Senate, anyway - that it got loaded with all kinds of spending via the GOP's usual threats not to pass it if it wasn't "bipartisan," threats that thinly disguised their belief that none of this stuff would make it to the desk of a President Obama?

Am I remembering this wrong?

Or have I become a permanent resident of Upside-Down World, in which Republicans oppose bills they once wanted to pass because instead of a Republican president signing it, it would be a Democratic president signing it, and where Republicans who had been happily spending like they had a serious shopping addiction, now want us to believe they are serious guardians of the country's fiscal future.

They need to change the name of the House and Senate chambers to "Kabuki Palace I" and Kabuki Palace II."

This bill (none / 0) (#15)
by jbindc on Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 08:35:52 AM EST

was drafted last year, but not debated on until this term - when Obama was president. The funding of these projects is for the second half of the 2009 budget, which started in October under Bush, but the Senate Democrats didn't want to send it to Bush last year, because it was an election year. So while Obama, Emanuel, and Gibbs try to tell you this is old business and we need to move on, it's just not true.

[ Parent ]

My irritation with the way this is (5.00 / 1) (#16)
by Anne on Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 09:50:00 AM EST

all being handled has nothing to do with the time period it is supposed to cover, but with the politics that is being played with it, and the shifting positions on earmarks and pork and spending - and with the inability of the Democrats to take anything resembling control of the situation; Republicans are jerking the Democrats around at will, as usual. And Obama is pretty much letting them, distancing himself from the whole mess because it is "old business."

Obama, in keeping with his campaign pledges or promises or statements that reflected a different philosophy and led people to believe that things would be done differently if they elected him, should have told the Congress: "Look: this country is in an economic crisis, and care needs to be taken that the things we appropriate money for - separate from what is needed to keep the government's doors open and the lights on - are in line with stimulating this economy and helping create jobs. DO NOT SEND ME a bill that will be an insult to the millions of Americans worried about how to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. DON'T DO IT. If you can't bring yourselves to pass a bill that is mindful of these things, then pass a Continuing Resolution to keep the government from going dark, and go back to the table."

That would be leadership, and that's what the American people want to hear; we're not getting that in any way, shape or form, and there are going to be consequences.

Obama and Emmanuel and Gibbs are wrong: it doesn't matter that the bill was written in 2008, because its passage in 2009 will have consequences now, and consequences in the future. I mean, that's about as basic a truth as there is, and it's kind of insulting to realize they expected us not to get that.

[ Parent ]

Exactly (none / 0) (#17)
by jbindc on Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 10:11:33 AM EST

Their spin is that it is "old business", but it's not - it's business that the Senate Dems didn't want to finish it last year. (Hmm....who was a member of the Senate last year that could have helped push this through....?)

Interestingly enough, look who has earmarks in the bill:

President Obama, who took a no-earmark pledge on the campaign trail, is listed as one of dozens of cosponsors of a $7.7 million set-aside in the fiscal 2009 omnibus spending bill passed by the House on Wednesday.
But not for long.
On Thursday, Rob Blumenthal, a spokesman for the Senate Appropriations Committee said the one earmark in the bill that carries Obama's name will be edited. The committee will attribute that earmark to other senators on the list of that provision's supporters, but not Obama.

SNIP

- Vice President Joe Biden, who asked for $94.9 million in set-asides before assuming his new office. He is a co-sponsor of those expenditure requests.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar was the lone sponsor on $5.4 million of earmarks in the budget bill. Including the earmarks he supported as a secondary sponsor, he's linked to $227.4 million of earmarks.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood asked for $31.2 million in earmarks, including $380,000 to replace vehicles that assist disabled persons in LaHood's hometown of Peoria, Ill.

Emanuel, the former congressman from Illinois, is currently sponsoring $3.9 million in earmarks on an individual basis.

Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis, a former member of Congress representing California, is linked to $38.4 million worth of earmarks, although she was the lone sponsor for only $814,000 of that total.

Clinton sponsored just under $109 million in earmarks, although many of those were sponsored in concert with other senators.

[ Parent ]

One vote short? (5.00 / 3) (#13)
by kenosharick on Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 08:18:57 AM EST

Its time to get Al Franken seated to the job he was elected. Can you imagine the media uproar if a Dem was dragging this out in the courts the way that coleman is? We would be seeing screaming headlines about a "sore loser" every day.

Make McCain and McConnell filibuster (5.00 / 2) (#14)
by ruffian on Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 08:30:15 AM EST

I guarantee that after a few days of watching them talk about pig odor and volcanos, at least one Republican will do what is necessary to save his party from further embarrassment and vote to end the filibuster.

Agricultural odors (5.00 / 2) (#22)
by Pieter B on Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 01:26:22 PM EST

Milady, who grew up in Sioux City, says the Iowa answer to "Ewwww -- what's that smell?" is "That's money, darlin'."

Good! I don't want it passed (none / 0) (#1)
by BrassTacks on Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 01:58:29 AM EST

There's too much pork, the nation is going broke, the market is tanking, uneployment rocketing and our esteemed leaders are worried about stinking pigs and going fish. It would all be funny, if it weren't so serious, and our country wasn't going down the tubes. These fools are fiddlin' while our country burns!

: What's foolish is to threaten a government (5.00 / 3) (#2)
by andgarden on Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 02:03:34 AM EST

shutdown over objections to earmarks.

[ Parent ]

It doesn't take much... (none / 0) (#3)
by EL seattle on Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 02:07:16 AM EST

... of a leap to associate pig odor reasearch (which is probably productive and worth funding at some point) with wasteful budgetary pork (which doesn't fit anyone's idea of a new sort of politics). What's Harkin thinking here? Can't he just wear a "Kick Me" sign on his back? It's almost like he's making the sort of desperate plea for attention that you'd expect from a teenager. Sheesh.

It seems to me that now is the time for effective symbolism, not... this.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa... (none / 0) (#23)
by sarcastic unnamed one on Fri Mar 06, 2009 at 01:40:07 PM EST

backed $1.7 million for pig odor research.

we're in a recession bordering on a depression and Harkin wants money for pig odor research?

From another blog:

Nebraskans, especially us in Omaha, are grateful for the prevailing westerly winds. We don't have to smell all the hogs in Iowa. However, Iowegians get to smell Nebraska cattle.

From WaPo:

Senate's top purveyors of pet projects
The 10 largest Senate co-sponsors of earmarks in the $410 billion omnibus spending bill, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense:

Thad Cochran, R-Miss.: $470,857,775

Roger Wicker, R-Miss.: $390,993,300

Mary Landrieu, D-La.: $332,099,063

Tom Harkin, D-Iowa: $292,360,036

David Vitter, R-La.: $249,182,063

Kit Bond, R-Mo.: $248,160,991

Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.: $235,027,932

Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii: $225,077,157

Richard Shelby, R-Ala.: $219,398,750

Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa: $199,144,486