Senate preparing $410 billion spending bill for Obama

WASHINGTON -- Senate leaders hoped Thursday to clear for President Obama a huge spending bill that awards big increases to domestic programs and is stuffed with pet projects sought by lawmakers in both parties.

The $410 billion spending bill, spanning 1,122 pages, wraps nine spending bills together to fund the annual operating budgets of every Cabinet department except for Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs.

To the embarrassment of Obama -- he promised during last year's campaign to cut way back the number of so-called "earmarks" -- the bill contains 7,991 pet projects totaling $5.5 billion, according to calculations by the GOP staff of the House Appropriations Committee.

The earmarks run the gamut. There's $190,000 for the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyo., $238,000 to fund a deep-sea voyaging program for native Hawaiian youths, agricultural research projects and grants to local police departments, among many others.

Such home-state projects again came under attack Thursday from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Obama's presidential opponent last year and a longtime caustic critic of pork-barrel spending. McCain called the bill "a swollen, wasteful, egregious example of out-of-control spending."

The measure also reverses Bush administration policies that tightened rules on Cuba travel and allowed Mexican trucking firms broad access to U.S. highways. A program popular with Republicans that gives $7,500 private school scholarships to District of Columbia students as an alternative to the city's troubled public schools is in danger of being shut down next year.

The big increases -- among them a 21 percent boost for a program that feeds infants and poor women and a 10 percent hike for housing vouchers for the poor -- represent a clear win for Democrats who spent most of the past decade battling with President George W. Bush over money for domestic programs.

Democrats abandoned the budget process last year, opting against veto battles with Bush and instead gambling that Obama would win the election and sign the massive bill into law.

Generous above-inflation increases are spread throughout, including a $2.4 billion, 13 percent increase for the Agriculture Department and a 10 percent increase for the money-losing Amtrak passenger rail system.

Congress also awarded itself a 10 percent increase in its own budget, bringing it to $4.4 billion. But the House inserted a provision denying lawmakers the automatic cost-of-living pay increase they are due next Jan. 1.

Still, the State Department and foreign aid accounts would receive a 12 percent boost.