Pentagon budget hits new record in spending bill
Thursday, 25 September 2008
WASHINGTON, Sept 24 (AP): The Pentagon budget would rise to a new record while US automakers and victims of hurricanes and floods would receive billions of dollars in a $630 billion-plus omnibus spending bill rushing toward the House floor Wednesday.
The year-end budget measure also lifts a quarter-century ban on drilling for oil off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and is flying under the political radar compared with a hugely controversial White House plan to bail out Wall Street.
The bill is fuelled by a need to keep the government running past the October 1 start of the 2009 budget year. Until now, Democrats had mostly punted on the need to pass the 12 annual spending bills funding agency operating budgets, but the 357-page measure released late Tuesday - along with 752 pages of accompanying explanations and tables of previously secret earmarks by lawmakers - would close out about 60 per cent of the budget work Congress has to pass each year.
That includes $488 billion for the Pentagon, $40 billion for Homeland Security Department programmes and $73 billion for veterans programmes and military base construction projects.
The bill settles dozens of battles, big and small, between Democrats controlling Congress and the lame-duck Bush administration and its allies on Capitol Hill.
The most significant decision - and a big win for Republicans in this politically charged election season - came as Democrats capitulated on the question of lifting the offshore drilling ban. And the Bush administration succeeded in repelling efforts by Democrats to extend unemployment insurance, increase food stamp payments and help states deal with shortfalls in their Medicaid budgets.
The bill would also eliminate the need for a much-dreaded, postelection lame-duck session to deal with unfinished work. The Senate is expected to send the bill to President Bush, who's expected to sign it.
The secretive deliberations - and the intense spotlight cast on the separate Wall Street bailout - seemed to ensure that the spending measure would have a low profile. But that also meant Democrats will have to battle to remind voters of the gains made in funding for popular homeland security and veterans health programmes.
Reuters adds: California's sputtering economy is going to get worse, a report released Wednesday said.
The state's jobless rate will hold above 7 per cent through next year as the homes slump grinds on and finance payrolls shrink, according to the UCLA Anderson Forecast.
A "strong undercurrent of housing and finance generated weakness" is dragging down growth in the eighth-largest economy in the world, the report said.
"Our near term quarterly forecast has things getting worse," it said.
"Unemployment will continue to increase to the thin air of 7.4 per cent by the end of the year and it will stay in that neighbourhood for each quarter in 2009," the report added.
The diversified economies of the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas had been offsetting the drag of the housing downturn in many other parts of the state.
The year-end budget measure also lifts a quarter-century ban on drilling for oil off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and is flying under the political radar compared with a hugely controversial White House plan to bail out Wall Street.
The bill is fuelled by a need to keep the government running past the October 1 start of the 2009 budget year. Until now, Democrats had mostly punted on the need to pass the 12 annual spending bills funding agency operating budgets, but the 357-page measure released late Tuesday - along with 752 pages of accompanying explanations and tables of previously secret earmarks by lawmakers - would close out about 60 per cent of the budget work Congress has to pass each year.
That includes $488 billion for the Pentagon, $40 billion for Homeland Security Department programmes and $73 billion for veterans programmes and military base construction projects.
The bill settles dozens of battles, big and small, between Democrats controlling Congress and the lame-duck Bush administration and its allies on Capitol Hill.
The most significant decision - and a big win for Republicans in this politically charged election season - came as Democrats capitulated on the question of lifting the offshore drilling ban. And the Bush administration succeeded in repelling efforts by Democrats to extend unemployment insurance, increase food stamp payments and help states deal with shortfalls in their Medicaid budgets.
The bill would also eliminate the need for a much-dreaded, postelection lame-duck session to deal with unfinished work. The Senate is expected to send the bill to President Bush, who's expected to sign it.
The secretive deliberations - and the intense spotlight cast on the separate Wall Street bailout - seemed to ensure that the spending measure would have a low profile. But that also meant Democrats will have to battle to remind voters of the gains made in funding for popular homeland security and veterans health programmes.
Reuters adds: California's sputtering economy is going to get worse, a report released Wednesday said.
The state's jobless rate will hold above 7 per cent through next year as the homes slump grinds on and finance payrolls shrink, according to the UCLA Anderson Forecast.
A "strong undercurrent of housing and finance generated weakness" is dragging down growth in the eighth-largest economy in the world, the report said.
"Our near term quarterly forecast has things getting worse," it said.
"Unemployment will continue to increase to the thin air of 7.4 per cent by the end of the year and it will stay in that neighbourhood for each quarter in 2009," the report added.
The diversified economies of the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas had been offsetting the drag of the housing downturn in many other parts of the state.