President to sign a massive spending bill to keep the federal government running but he is cracking down on lawmakers penchant for stuffing such legislation with billions of dollars in pet projects.
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama plans to sign a massive spending bill to keep the federal government running even though it is stashed with the very kinds of pet projects that the campaigning Obama promised to resist.
Obama could sign the $410 billion spending package as early as Wednesday although he remains troubled by the so-called earmarks in the bill that Republicans and moderate Democrats have eviscerated as unworthy pork-barrel spending. The president was to announce earmark reforms on Wednesday.
White House officials in recent weeks have dismissed criticism of the earmarks in the bill saying the legislation was a remnant of last year and that the president planned to turn his attention to future spending instead of looking backward.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama wouldnt be the first president to sign legislation that he viewed as less than ideal. Asked whether Obama had second thoughts about signing the bill Gibbs reply was curt: No.
This is necessary to continue funding government Gibbs said. It represents last years business. Although its not perfect the president will sign the legislation but demonstrate for all involved rules moving forward that he thinks can make this process work a little bit better.
Its that process that administration official planned to focus on Wednesday not a bill signing that might take place in private. Aides said the administration would move to introduce new rules of the road that could allow Obama greater sway over lawmakers particularly on politically embarrassing spending that generated mockery from pundits and rival politicians.
During his presidential campaign Obama promised to force Congress to curb its pork-barrel-spending ways. Yet the bill sent from the Democratic-controlled Congress to the White House on Tuesday contained 7991 earmarks totaling $5.5 billion according to calculations by the Republican staff of the House Appropriations Committee.
While the White House would say only that Obama would announce new rules on earmarks on Wednesday it was clear he wanted to rein in spending particularly on the pet projects lawmakers inserted into the spending bill.
The 1132-page bill has an extraordinary reach wrapping together nine spending bills to fund the annual operating budgets of every Cabinet department except Defense Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs. Among the many earmarks are $485000 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.
Most of the government has been running on a stopgap funding bill set to expire at midnight Wednesday. Refusing to sign the newly completed spending bill would force Congress to pass another bill to keep the lights on come Thursday or else shut down the massive federal government. That is an unlikely possibility for a president who has spent just seven weeks in office.
The $410 billion bill includes significant increases in food aid for the poor energy research and other programs. It was supposed to have been completed last fall but Democrats opted against election-year battles with Republicans and former President George W. Bush.
The measure was a top priority for Democratic leaders who praised it for numerous increases denied by Bush. It once enjoyed support from Republicans.
But the bill ran into an unexpected political hailstorm in Congress after Obamas spending-heavy economic stimulus bill and his 2010 budget plan which forecast a $1.8 trillion deficit for the current budget year.
The bills big increases -- among them a 14 percent boost for a popular program that feeds infants and poor women and a 10 percent increase for housing vouchers for the poor -- represent a clear win for Democrats who spent most of the past decade battling with Bush over money for domestic programs.
Generous above-inflation increases are spread throughout including a $2.4 billion 13 percent increase for the Agriculture Department and a 10 percent increase for the money-losing Amtrak passenger rail system. The measure also contains a provision denying lawmakers the automatic cost-of-living pay increase they are due next Jan. 1.
