Porkulus 2: The Omnibus Spending Bill

That's right, there's another one a-comin'!  Just days after the passage of the largest taxpayer expense in the history of the planet, the Democrats are coming back to the public trough for more pork money.  Newsmax reports that the upcoming omnibus spending bill contains 9,000 earmarks:

During the 2008 presidential campaign, candidates Barack Obama and John McCain fought vigorously over who would be toughest on congressional earmarks.

"We need earmark reform," Obama said in September during a presidential debate in Oxford, Miss. "And when I'm president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely."

President Barack Obama should prepare to carve out a lot of free time and keep the coffee hot this week as Congress prepares to unveil a $410 billion omnibus spending bill that's riddled with thousands of earmarks, despite his calls for restraint and efforts on Capitol Hill to curtail the practice.

The bill will contain about 9,000 earmarks totaling $5 billion, congressional officials say. Many of the earmarks — loosely defined as local projects inserted by members of Congress — were inserted last year as the spending bills worked their way through various committees.

Hope!  CHANGE!

Oh, by the way, the extra fun part of this bill is that -- like the Theft/Pork Act -- no one will have ample time to look through this bill, analyze it, or debate it:

Here we go again! House Republicans are bracing for another onslaught of out-of-control Democrat-authored spending as the omnibus bill is expected to hit the floor of the House as early as next week.

And it'll be yet another spending bill House Republicans and the American people have not yet been allowed to see and the Democrats haven't even bothered to read. As if the $1.2 trillion Democrats spent on "stimulus" last week wasn't enough of a disaster, this colossal bill encompasses the remaining nine appropriations bills for fiscal year 2009 sloughed off by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

House minority leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) called upon the Speaker Thursday to release the voluminous spending bill online without delay. "If Democratic leaders plan to schedule a vote on the half-trillion dollar omnibus spending bill next week, they should post the legislation online immediately so the American people have adequate time to read the measure and understand what is in it," Boehner said. "My colleagues in the Republican leadership and I made this request two weeks ago, and to date, our request has gone unanswered. Time is running short, and American taxpayers deserve to know how their hard-earned tax dollars will be used under this legislation."

Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), the House Republican Conference chairman, joined Boehner in asking again - apparently in vain -- for an open process from the secretive Democrat leadership this time around. "More than two weeks ago, House Republicans called on Speaker Pelosi to post online the text of the upcoming half-trillion dollar 'omnibus' spending bill, bringing it out of the shadows and before the American people," Pence said. "So far, that call has gone unanswered. Democrats continue to spend the people's money in secret. I renew my call for Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Obey to immediately post the text of this bill online, and allow the American people an opportunity to see how their tax dollars are being spent. As we recently learned, legislation negotiated in secret produces bad public policy. This can be avoided. We need to reopen the appropriations process to the American public."

Transparency?  What transparency?  We'll have none of that crap in the Obama Era.

There's my two cents.