Many of the earmarks in this bill, and in previous fiscal 2009 bills, raised congressional squandering to a new level, even by Washington's corrupt standards. Estimated as high as $18 billion all told, it comes to more than the Interior Department's entire budget. See whether these fit in your wallet:
-- $143,000 for an online encyclopedia in Nevada. Have these people ever heard of Google?
-- $951,500 for something called a "sustainable Las Vegas." If we are to believe the TV ads for America's gambling mecca, this means money spent in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas. You betcha.
-- $207,000 for a program to remove tattoos. Where else but in Los Angeles?
-- $2.1 million for New York's Center for Great Genetics.
-- $6.6 million for termite research in New Orleans. Can't Orkin pay for this?
-- $1.7 million to research pig odor in Iowa.
-- And to sweeten the pot, $1.7 million for a honeybee factory in Weslaco, Texas.
The congressional shopping list goes on and on, dishing out money to the Alaska PTA, a robotics center in South Carolina, a rodeo museum in South Dakota and $238,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Honolulu, Hawaii.
When the bill was being debated in the Senate, an outraged Sen. John McCain read through a partial list, calling it "disgraceful," "corrupt" and outright thievery of the taxpayers' hard-earned tax dollars.
"We're going to spend $2 million for the promotion of astronomy in Hawaii," McCain roared, asking Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, "Why do we need $2 million to promote astronomy in Hawaii when unemployment is going up and the stock market is tanking?"
In the end, the Senate passed the bill and sent it off to the White House, where Obama sheepishly signed the document last week behind closed doors.
Congress had produced sausage, as the often-ugly legislative-making process is known. But Obama, who repeatedly promised voters he would go over every spending measure "line by line" and veto each pork bill, held his nose and enacted it into law. He vowed to battle future earmarks and came up with anemic rules to weed them out, but lawmakers said the rules would do little to stop them.
"Absent a genuine veto threat, he's just spitting in the wind," remarked Rep. Jeff Flake, Arizona Republican.
"In just 50 days, Congress has voted to spend $1.2 trillion" between the economic stimulus and the omnibus appropriations bill," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said last week.
But those bills were just the warm-up. Now they're about to spend some real money -- Obama's $3.6 trillion budget for 2010.