When did it become common to put unrelated items into a bill? I could sort of understand this if, as a matter of expedience a lot of administrative items that everyone agreed upon got stuffed into a bill so it could be all be voted on at once. On the other hand, I wonder when it became ethical to tie, say, subsidies for peanut farmers to funding a war effort?
Wasn't this one of the things that Democrats were up in arms about? What was all that talk about earmarks? Just in case you didn't know, the current Senate emergency war funding bill, AKA cut and run by March '08 bill, also has something like 19 billion with a B dollars. How convenient that the Democrats have not yet ratified the earmark transparency provisions prior to this bill.
I wonder how many votes Nancy Pelosi had to buy with the $19 billion of pork that is also in the House bill. It's something less than 218. However, at $19 billion, even if she had to buy every one, that is still about $87 million dollars per vote. Wow. Just, wow.
More justification to provide the president with the line item veto.
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