United States President Barack Obama signed into law the
bill approved by the lame duck Congress that authorizes federal spending for
about $1.1 trillion. The House of Representatives is controlled by Republicans while the Senate is controlled by Obama’s fellow liberal Democrats. Most federal
spending is authorized by the law through the end of September, except for the
Department of Homeland Security, which is funded only until the end of February
because of objections by conservative Republican Congressmen to Obama’s border
control policy changes.
All federal
spending authority would have terminated by the end of the year. The legislation mostly
leaves the status quo unchanged, and thus funds Obama’s federalization of
health insurance (“Obamacare”) and other policies, but with several additional minor
conservative victories, some of which were particularly upsetting to the Left.
The spending authorizations
continue the budget sequestration cuts that have reduced federal spending by
tens of billions of dollars. The U.S.
has been spending at a pace of a trillion dollars a year since the GOP won the
2010 Congressional Elections and subsequently regained control of the House,
but the pace would have been even higher without Republicans in Congress
forcing Obama to compromise and cut spending.
The authorizations do not rely on any tax increases, while a separate
bill also signed into law by the President extends several business and
personal tax breaks that would have expired.
The new Congress, both chambers of
which will be led by Republicans, will be sworn in to office in January and
have the opportunity to propose more spending restraint for the rest of the
budget year and other conservative reforms within the legislation that
authorizes spending. In addition, the
Congress may make use of the legislative option of spending rescissions.
The authorizations relax a number
of environmental, health and banking regulations. On the environment, the law bars federal
money to force the phase-out of incandescent light bulbs while prohibiting the
listing on the Endangered Species list of an animal that would have created an
impediment to industry. In regard to
health, the regulations that would have reduced the salt content of the federal
funding of school lunches were weakened.
Banking regulations were eased by not requiring separate accounts for
reserves for certain types of derivatives, which were a small percentage of
those regulated under the onerous Sarbanes-Oxley regulation. The authorizations also bar federal money for
marijuana legalization in the District
of Columbia and increase certain contribution limits
for political donors.
The defense authorization requires
equal treatment of victims of any past or future act of violence in the
American homeland that is inspired by certain foreign terrorist organizations
eligible for Purple Hearts or veterans benefits for servicemen and Medals of
Freedom for civilian federal government employees with the victims of any
similar acts committed abroad. The
intent was to include the acts of violent jihad on the military recruitment
center in Arkansas that killed one American
soldier and the Ft. Hood Massacre in Texas
that killed U.S. 13 soldiers and civilian contractors, both of which occurred
in 2009. See my post last post on this
subject in September of 2013, Now Is the Time for Congress to Declare the Ft.
Hood Shooting an Act of War, http://williamcinfici.blogspot.com/2013/09/now-is-time-for-congress-to-declare-ft.html.
In it, I cite my earlier posts about the Obama Administration’s failure to
identify the enemy in the War on Terrorism as Islamists and the Arkansas and Ft.
Hood attacks on the American homeland in particular as acts of violent jihad
and thus battles of that war and the unequal treatment of the victims of
violent jihad in the American homeland, even though the enemy has made the
entire world, including the American homeland, its battlefield. It is disappointing that Obama had to be
forced to sign the provision through the defense authorization bill. Conservatives should call upon the Administration
to carry out the provision and award the medals and grant the benefits to the
victims.
Another provision of the defense
spending law authorizes the sale by the U.S.
of lethal arms to the government of Ukraine . The Obama Administration has only been
providing the Ukrainian military non-lethal materiel in the face of invasion by
Russia ,
a superpower.
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