Extras in War Bill H.R.2346

Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2009 (H.R. 2346), otherwise widely referred to as "war funding bill", has already passed the House and the Senate, and currently is in a negotiation phase to reconcile the differences between the House version and the Senate version.

Not just the amount, which was originally $90 billion, has increased to over $100 billion as the bill went through Congress, but it seems to have acquired quite a lot of "extras" attached to the bill that are getting some media attention (such as here, and here).

So, after finally obtaining the bill number from someone's blog, I went to the Library of Congress THOMAS to take a peek at the text of the bill and see what are the extras. (Here's the link for THOMAS, but the system times you out so often you have to keep entering the search query. This link won't time you out but doesn't reflect the provisions that are struck out.)

Department of Commerce
$40 million economic development assistance program

Department of Justice
Salaries and expense money for various departments

Executive Office of the President and Fund Appropriated to the President
$1.5 billion for pandemic preparedness and response including swine flu

Judiciary, SEC
Salaries and expense

Department of Homeland Security
Salaries and expenses for US Customs, Immigration, Coast Guard

FEMA
$30 million for Operation Stonegarden [Doesn't this sound like there's something sinister in the background? Why is a disaster-relief agency engaged in border patrol? Here's more on this FEMA operation.]

Department of Health and Human Services
$82 million for refugee and entrant assistance

Legislative Branch
$72 million for Capitol Police

Department of State
$655 million for worldwide security protection

Bilateral Economic Assistance
$2.8 billion for economic support fund for Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Congo (bulk of it is for Afghanistan)

General Provisions
$285 million for global financial crisis to help developing countries [How could we help when our house is in disorder?]
$3.7 billion for International Development Association [That's part of World Bank to combat poverty in the world.]
$356 million for debt relief under International Development Association

Climate change mitigation and greenhouse gas accounting
Treasury Secretary to make sure that multilateral development banks adopt and implement greenhouse gas accounting

Additional assistance to Georgia
$42 million

Other Matters
Increase IMF quota by 4.9 billion SDR (= $7.6 billion; US$1 is SDR 0.645799)
loan to IMF up to 75 billion SDR (=$116 billion)
Authorize Treasury Secretary to instruct the US executive director of the Fund to sell up to 12,965,649 ounces (367 metric tons or 405 short tons) of the Fund's gold (that would result in $12 billion proceeds)

Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009
A covered record (a photograph that was taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 and duly certified by Secretary of Defense) shall not be subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

As the bill is in the negotiation stage, many provisions are being struck out. The above information is likely to change; some of it may be already obsolete, while new provisions may be being added.

The contention seems to be IMF and Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act. Many lawmakers find it hard to approve both.

Neither is related to supplemental appropriation for wars, is it?

Nor greenhouse gas accounting, nor salaries at SEC.

(Business is indeed as usual on Capitol Hill. Don't they know we are broke?)

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