Early Christmas for Conservatives

From The Daily Outrage by Ari Bernman of The Nation Online:

In their massive year-end omnibus spending bill, Congressional Republicans replaced the holiday turkey with a heaping of pork. The $388 billion, fourteen pound, 1,000 page legislation overwhelmingly passed both houses of Congress, replete with 11,000 wasteful local , cuts to vital social services and handouts to the wealthy and religious right. Out of hundreds of items, The Daily Outrage selected the top five favors to big business and Christian conservatives.

1. Undermining Reproductive Rights: Rep. David Weldon (R-Fla) inserted an amendment--with no debate in either the House or Senate--allowing hospitals and insurers to refuse to , even in the case of rape or incest. The new provision applies the "conscience clause"--which allows churches to withhold abortions based on religious grounds--to secular hospitals, undermining both the spirit and law of Roe v. Wade. Any doctor can now deny a woman the right to choose, disregarding the Constitution in the process.

2. Slashing Education: As special interests charged ahead, underprivileged students--from pre school to college age--were left even further behind. Congressional Republicans underfunded President Bush's modest requests for special education by $481 million, No Child Left Behind by $398 million and Head Start by $103 million. Up to 100,000 college students, primarily from families making $35,000-40,000, will lose their financial aid benefits entirely. Under a new Department of Education aid formula, 1.2 million low-income students could face additional grant cuts in the coming year.

3. Harming the Environment: Congress authorized drilling in the protected Yukon Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, opened up the East Coast's largest undeveloped island for commercial exploration, and defeated an amendment eliminating for timber corporations. While slashing clean water spending by $242 million, Republicans allocated $1.7 billion for an unnecessary expansion on the Upper Mississippi River.

4. Privatizing the Government: Facing a rarely-invoked veto threat from the White House, at the last hour Congress dropped a bipartisan proposal--passed in two consecutive years--to place new restrictions on the Bush Administration's plan to privatize thousands of government jobs. Bush's "competitive sourcing initiative" actually prevents government workers from submitting their most competitive bids while exempting private contractors from having to outline the costs saved by privatization. According to the AFL-CIO, House Republicans inserted the Bush-approved language as the spending bill's second-to-last-item.

5. Boosting Outer Space: While presiding over deep cuts in education, environmental cleanup, foreign aid and HIV/AIDS funding, Tom DeLay dramatically increased the budget of NASA--located in the majority leader's backyard--by $16.2 billion, an astonishing $822 million increase from last year. If only they could've included a provision sending DeLay and his corporate cronies on a permanent test-run to outer space.