The Kansas Republican saw this bill as prelude to a fight in December over the budget, seeing the possibility of attaching a rider on refugee policy to an appropriations (spending) bill.
In the short term, with the 109th Congress having punted on fiscal 2007 appropriations, spending authorized by the 2005 surface transportation act hangs in the balance.
The 2-day debate on the Commerce, Justice, Science (CJS) Appropriations spending bill also gave Representative Ted Poe (R TX) an opportunity to win support for his long-running assault on the American Community Survey (ACS), a monthly questionnaire that goes out to 3.5 million people and supplements the decennial census.
Most Republicans are focusing on their control of the appropriations and spending procedures in Congress.
However, partly because of delays between appropriations and spending, the Congressional Budget Office reckons that the actual reduction in outlays will be about forty-five billion dollars, which is only about a quarter of one per cent of G.D.P.
From the Orange Bowl's four-day cruise to the Bahamas for executives and college athletics directors to the $700,000 the Sugar Bowl spent in 2007 and 2008 on "special appropriations," the spending at these nonprofit "charities" is out of control and Playoff PAC has meticulously documented these improprieties.
His years on Appropriations were spent not just juggling favours and nitpicking on procedure, but also proudly channelling money to the hills and hollows: making gravel tracks into Robert C. Byrd Freeways, turning fetid lock-ups into Robert C. Byrd Correctional Institutions, setting up the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope to look at the stars.
As a coda to the day, Mr. Pataki, a Republican, said he would send a bill for an emergency spending appropriation to keep the state government working until August, even if lawmakers were not.
The result is that at present there is no new spending appropriation bill that Congress is likely to pass any time soon.
In the unlikely event -- unlikely, that is, before the Civil War -- that appropriations outpaced revenues, Congress implicitly left it to the president to keep expenditures and revenues in line by not spending appropriations that were permissive rather than mandatory.
