War Bill H.R. 2346 Is Set To Be Approved, After All

Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2009 (H.R. 2346) is set to be approved, after negotiations between House and Senate and the White House resulted in the "compromise".

U.S. Lawmakers to Vote on $106 Billion War Measure
(6/12/09 Bloomberg):

"U.S. lawmakers are set to approve a $106 billion war-spending bill after President Barack Obama said he would use “every legal and administrative remedy available” to block the release of photos of troops abusing detainees."

There goes Freedom of Information, and that was the position of the administration to begin with.

"Lawmakers crafting the war-spending bill also defeated an attempt to remove from it a “cash for clunkers” provision offering as much as $4,500 to those trading in cars for more fuel-efficient models.

"Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the chamber’s No. 2 Democrat, estimated the provision would result in 250,000 cars being traded in. It would cost taxpayers $1 billion."

So they managed to put this back in, just like they wanted from the beginning. And this applies only to new car purchase, and as long as the new car's fuel efficiency is better than your old car that's OK. It would cost only $1 billion, and taxpayers are going to pay for it anyway. A chump change.

By the way, Mr. Durbin apparently made some shrewed investment decision back in September 2008 after he was in discussions with Messrs. Paulson and Bernanke (sorry, Dr. Bernanke) along with his Congressional colleagues, before the market started to crash in earnest in late September-early October. On September 19, the day he sold his mutual fund holdings, Dow had a huge up-day; it ended at 11,388. Then he put his money on Berkshire Hathaway by October 2, which shows there is some justice left in the world. (Didn't Martha Stewart have to go to prison for insider trading?)

"The bill also will approve an Obama request for $108 billion in aid, mostly in the form of a line of credit, to the International Monetary Fund to help it deal with the global recession. Lawmakers appropriated $5 billion to secure the aid."

Uh huh. It also happens to come with over $100 billion loan guarantee to IMF.

If IMF thing is in, World Bank thing should be in, too. To fight poverty in the world. Oh I see. It's a war. War against poverty. Only $4 billion. Big deal, right?

What compromise? It sure looks like the administration got everything they wanted. Here's my post when the bill was still in negotiation. The bill will also authorize Treasury Secretary Geithner to instruct IMF to sell part of IMF's gold. China must be laughing and saying "Oh, thank you so much, Timmy". Tim will also get to beat up on various development banks to adopt green gas accounting.

I don't think the U.S. economy will have much chance of surviving, not to mention thriving, under the government like this. Today's stock market agrees with me. It is selling off all day, just quietly selling off.

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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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