The Washington Post’s Ben Pershing reports that on Sunday the Senate passed an “omnibus” spending bill that gives $447 billion to keep dozens of federal agencies functioning. Like Government Executive’s recent coverage of this topic, Pershing has troubles bringing himself to actually write on the bill: the more ‘newsy’ topics of a health care bill and a possible jobs creations package get most of the ink.

But what this bill does is interesting in its own right: it increases spending among domestic federal agencies. This ends the practice from a Republican Congress/Bush administration of holding the line on domestic spending while ratcheting up money for the Pentagon and intelligence agencies. Now almost all discretionary spending (spending on everything but the “entitlement” programs of social security, medicare, medicaid) is being increased.

Comment RSS - You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.