Reid Pulls Controversial $1.2 Trillion Spending Bill in Favor of Short-Term Budget Fix

GOP senators kill spending bill over $8 billion in earmarks
Reporting from Washington — Republicans on Friday reveled in a victory over Government Spending that showcased their resolve in the fight over the federal purse. By killing a $1.3-trillion spending bill, the GOP extinguished a sheaf of earmarked expenditures and drew in straying GOP colleagues — even those who had inserted the Earmarks and helped write the bill, which would have funded the government through September 2011. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D- Nevada) withdrew th...

GOP senators kill spending bill over $8 billion in earmarks
Reporting from Washington — Republicans on Friday reveled in a victory over Government Spending that showcased their resolve in the fight over the federal purse. By killing a $1.3-trillion spending bill, the GOP extinguished a sheaf of earmarked expenditures and drew in straying GOP colleagues — even those who had inserted the Earmarks and helped write the bill, which would have funded the government through September 2011. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D- Nevada) withdrew th...

With big spending bill's demise, is 'earmark' new dirty word on Hill?
Deficit hawks and Watchdog groups see Thursday's demise of an omnibus spending bill in the Senate as a turning point. A critical mass of lawmakers, they say, are committed to an earmark ban. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nev., holds a copy of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington Thursday. There was no last hurrah for Earmarks - known to supporters as “congressionally mandated spending,” and to critics a...

Inouye defends omnibus appropriations bill
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) forcefully defended the abandoned $1.1 Trillion omnibus appropriations bill in a Senate floor Speech Friday evening and argued that opponents of the bill were wrong to say the 2010 Midterm Elections were about ending Earmarks. Inouye's remarks came as the Senate approved a three-day continuing resolution to avert a government shutdown Saturday. The Senate is moving toward approving a two-month CR that would fund the government a...

Dream Act Dead In Senate: Harry Reid Couldnt Muster The Votes
Senator Harry Reid hasn’t had a good couple of days, first the Omnibus spending bill and now the DREAM Act. Dead in the Senate is how you could describe the bill intended to grant legal status to millions of Illegal Immigrants. Democrats fell five votes shy of the 60 needed to advance the bill passed by Nancy Pelosi’s House of Representatives. Even with the help of Republicans like Lisa Murkowski, Richard Lugar and Bob Bennett, enough democrats were wary of their 2012 campaigns to join the ...

GOP senators kill spending bill over $8 billion in earmarks
Source: LA Times Republicans on Friday reveled in a victory over Government Spending that showcased their resolve in the fight over the federal purse. By killing a $1.3-trillion spending bill, the GOP extinguished a sheaf of earmarked expenditures and drew in straying GOP colleagues — even those who had inserted the Earmarks and helped write the bill, which would have funded the government through September 2011. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D- Nevada) withdrew the bill Thursday night in t...

Immigration End Game: DREAM Act Defeated in the Senate
The Senate failed to overcome a Bipartisan Filibuster against the DREAM Act Saturday, by a vote of 55 to 41, just five short of the 60 needed to move the Immigration Bill on to a final debate in the chamber. The Controversial measure had been the last hope of Immigration Activists looking this year to pass even a scaled-back bill expanding access to Citizenship. Had it passed the Senate, the Legislation would have given young Illegal Immigrants a path to citizenship if they completed two years ...

Republicans Block Spending Package
WASHINGTON — The collapse of a government-wide spending package in the final days of this Congressional session sets up a politically charged fiscal showdown early next year, testing the determination of Republicans about to take over the House with promises to slash an array of domestic programs. Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio vowed Friday that Republicans would continue to focus on cutting spending. The latest on President Obama, the new Congress and other news from Washington ...

Congress pontificated against earmarks, then then packed bill with pork
Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell: Still the prince of pork (AP) More than two dozen senators — most of them Republicans — put hundreds of homestate projects in the $1.3 Trillion bill to fund the Federal Government even though they recently voted to ban so-called Earmarks. The effort to pass the 1,924-page bill collapsed Thursday night after complaints by Conservatives over its complexity and size and the relatively few days to be devoted to debating its merits. Anti-spending tea ...

Harry Reid Pulls Massive Omnibus Spending Bill; Mitch McConnell Reacts Video 12/16/10
Here is video of GOP Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell reacting to news that Democrat Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid had pulled the massive $1.1 Trillion Omnibus Spending Bill because he did not have the 60-votes for Cloture - which would bring it up for an Up or Down vote. The massive bill was filled with more than 39,000 Earmarks, and was 1,924-pages long . This means some kind of continuing resolution will likely be needed to fund the Government until the new Congress can act in J...

President Barack Obama Signs Tax Cut Extension into Law at WH Ceremoy Pelosi, Reid & Boehner No Show
President Barack Obama has his George H.W. Bush moment … “Read My Lips, No New Tax Cuts for the Rich” Yesterday, Barack Obama signed the Bush era tax extensions and called it Compromise. However, noticeably absent from the tax cut extension signing ceremonies were Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat Speaker of the Lame Duck House Nancy Pelosi and Republican Speaker of the House elect John Boehner. In the end, the tax extension bill was one that no one like...

Begich: Sorry about those earmarks, Alaska
From Erika Bolstad in Washington D.C. -- Earmarks have taken a hit in recent weeks, and only in Alaska would a senator apologize for not being able to deliver them. Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaksa, did just that, though, in a letter to Alaska organizations that had earmarks in an omnibus spending bill that fell apart last night. "I am disappointed, plain and simple, since we have worked in a Bipartisan manner to create a bill that contains projects as requested by nearly every Senator," he wrote. "M...

Peter Robinson: 'The Hero of the Hour' on Ricochet.com
Sen. Mitch McConnell. The defeat of the omnibus spending bill in the Senate yesterday represented, as Steve Manacek notes below, an enormous achievement--just enormous. That achievement belongs to the senior senator from Kentucky. To be sure, Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina did stout service, threatening to demand a reading of the 1,924 omnibus spending monstrosity, while Sen. John McCain appeared on all the Talk Shows, urging Americans to take to email and Twitter to oppose the outrage. (And...

Earmarks foul body politic
Earmarks are perfectly fine if they go to a nice enough project, says Rep. Barney Frank (D-Newton), who helped bring us the worst Financial Crisis since the Great Depression because he also thought subprime Mortgages were fine. I don’t believe this man has ever been right on anything. Think of him as a kind of reverse thermometer. When he says it’s hot, it’s cold. And when he smiles on earmarks, you ought to frown. These devices for localized gift giving came within a whisker ...

Dream Act fails in the U.S. Senate with George LeMieux voting against; Bill Nelson voting in favor
The Senate just shot down a measure aimed at helping put Children of Illegal Immigrants on a path to Citizenship. Florida Dem Bill Nelson voted for the measure; Republican George Lemieux -- whom Activists had targeted -- voted no. It needed 60 votes to survive -- but fell just 5 votes short. Strategists say the measure is likely dead for at least two years with Republicans in control of the U.S. House. Eligible Students watched the proceedings from the Senate gallery and at debate-watching par...

Reid Drops Omnibus Spending Bill
(NewsCore) - In a surprise move, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced on the Senate floor Thursday that he does not have the necessary votes to file for Cloture on a $1.1 Trillion omnibus spending bill and will therefore not bring it to the Senate floor for a vote. Reid said nine Republicans, who he refused to name, had previously assured him of their support for the bill but had walked away from it in the last few days. Instead, Reid said he will now work with Senate Minority Le...

Reid Drops Omnibus Spending Bill
(NewsCore) - In a surprise move, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced on the Senate floor Thursday that he does not have the necessary votes to file for Cloture on a $1.1 Trillion omnibus spending bill and will therefore not bring it to the Senate floor for a vote. Reid said nine Republicans, who he refused to name, had previously assured him of their support for the bill but had walked away from it in the last few days. Instead, Reid said he will now work with Senate Minority Le...

Senate leaders drops $1.3 trillion spending bill
WASHINGTON—After wrestling with -- and finally abandoning -- a 1,900-page catchall spending bill stuffed with more than $8 billion in home-state projects known as Earmarks in Washington and pork in the rest of the country, Senate leaders turned Friday to devising a measure to keep the Federal Government running into early next year. Nearly $1.3 Trillion in unfinished Budget work needed to keep the government running was packed into the spending measure, including $158 billion for Military...

Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Passes Senate Procedural Vote
WASHINGTON -- The Senate voted 63-33 on Saturday to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell, defeating a 17-year policy of banning gay and Lesbian service members from serving openly in the Military. Five Republicans crossed the aisle to vote against the policy: Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Scott Brown (R-Mass.), Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and George Voinovich (R-Ohio). The Senate vote is a vindication of Obama's decision to push for congressional Repeal as opposed to unilateral execut...

GOP Senate Aide: The Bill Wasnt Going to Be Read
At one point yesterday, according to a Senate Republican leadership aide, Democrats were telling reporters to “watch the floor” for action on the Omnibus Bill. GOP critics had pushed for all 1,924 pages of the Legislation to read aloud by Senate clerks — which would have taken an estimated 50 hours — but Democrats were planning to block this maneuver using a procedural trick. “The bill wasn’t going to be read,” says the Republican aide. “We were go...

Who Needs Safe Food? Or Health Care?
According to Senate Republicans, Americans don't need to improve the safety of our food supply by increasing the number of food inspections, despite recent outbreaks of food borne diseases and warnings by the USDA about Food Safety? What's surprising about this particular action by Senate Republicans is that it is occurring now after the same food safety bill was previously approved by the House and Senate earlier this month but failed the Constitutional requirement that bills that raise revenu...

Hill extends stop-gap bill
Congress extended a stop-gap spending bill Friday night to keep the government funded through next Tuesday as lawmakers and the White House try to hammer out a longer term answer to the year-end Budget Crisis. The action puts to rest fears of a government shutdown over the weekend, when the current continuing resolution was due to expire Saturday night. Continue Reading Text Size - + reset Politico 44 House and Senate approval came in quick order following the collapse Thursday evening of a...

Republicans Block Spending Package
WASHINGTON — The collapse of a government-wide spending package in the final days of this Congressional session sets up a politically charged fiscal showdown early next year, testing the determination of Republicans about to take over the House with promises to slash an array of domestic programs. Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio vowed Friday that Republicans would continue to focus on cutting spending. The latest on President Obama, the new Congress and other news from Washington ...

Collapse of the omnibus spending bill: rise of the 'tea party Congress'?
Some see ideals of Tea Party movement at play in Senate, after a huge spending bill loaded with Earmarks is scuttled after GOP lawmakers thought twice about it....

Extension Of Bush Tax Cuts Passes; Pork Laden Spending Bill Goes Down
So I’m sure you’ve heard by now. The House of Representatives passed the bill that will extend the Bush Tax Cuts, renew Unemployment Benefits for 13 months, and cut Social Security taxes for one year late last night. The roll call showed it was a total landslide at 277-148. Democrats had 139 yeas and 112 nays while the Republicans has 138-36 Go here to see the roll call and find out how they voted. The Democrats tried to pass a higher estate tax but that went down in flames also at 2...