According to the Bloomberg report on the $1.2 Trillion Senate Omnibus Spending bill, it is a monstrosity loaded with spending earmarks. Senate Republicans are indicating that they will vote to kill the bill, a “porked-up monstrosity [who's supporters] would forfeit any claim to fiscal responsibility and economic conservatism”.
So, just what constitutes a 'loaded' or 'packed' spending bill? Well, reading a little deeper, it means that more than 88 of the 100 Senators have obtained earmarks for their projects. Which means that at least 29 of the Republicans now vowing to kill the bill worked to gain earmarks for their pet projects! (I'm not picking on Republicans per se here, I'm not so naive as to believe Democrats have never pulled this same tactic.) What a win-win for them: They can posture that they are fiscally conservative, denounce the earmarking practice, but just in the off-chance that the bill succeeds, their home state gets some dough, and they can go home, and in a political two-face, tell their constituents about how much money they brought home to them to create jobs!
And, how much money are we talking here? What does 'porked-up' mean? Well, it means that the bill contains....wait for it.....
....wait for it....
$8 billion dollars in earmarks!
Stop. The entire bill is $1200 billion dollars. That means that without the earmarks, it would still be roughly $1200 billion dollars. $8 billion comprises just 2/3rds of 1% of the total.
Wow. Definitions in DC just don't match how we define words in the rest of the country. Like porker. If you were 1% overweight, I wouldn't refer to you as a porker, I probably wouldn't even notice (you'd be, what, 1.5 lbs heavier than you should be? Maybe 2 lbs?)
Like monstrosity. As Utah Senator Bob Bennett points out, the earmarks (300 pages of the 1294 page document), by indicating where some money is to go, provide transparency and prevent the White House from diverting that money to its pet projects. Maybe not a best practice, but certainly far from anything monstrous.
Like Integrity. Out here, integrity means you do and say the same thing everywhere, to everyone - that you can be trusted. In DC, however, it appears that you stand up for your ideology when you can be heard and seen, all the while sneaking some extra money in for your folks back home under the pretense that...hell, we don't actually know what pretense those hacks would make! But, do you suppose that when they are congratulating themselves about the $91 million (on average) each brought home to their state, that they are admitting that they did it via the very process they claim to loathe?
Like Bias. Due to media bias towards conflict and sensationalism*, the real details of the bill, things that really matter (how much for Defense? how much for Medicaid/Medicare? How much for Federal government? How much for Education? How much for roads/bridges/infrastructure?) aren't even mentioned.
Like Honesty. Doesn't have a separate meaning to folks back home, because it is a word that has been stripped of all meaning within our governing chambers.
*Borrowed from my friend Cameron who, correctly, pointed out that the media doesn't really have a left/right bias, but is biased towards whoever is creating the most strife.
Bibliography (just in case you can't follow the link above)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-15/trillion-dollar-bill-packed-with-earmarks-in-u-s-senate.html
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