I’m hearing that the Senate supplemental is weighing in at $121B, slightly slimmer than the House’s $124B, although the Ag Emergency package is $4.1B in the Senate bill compared to $3.7B in the House. I’ll let you know more as I know it, but the Senate Appropriations Committee will be voting on the bill tomorrow and the House is still trying to find the votes for their bill on the floor tomorrow.

But secondarily, one of the complaints we’ve heard from the appropriators is that we are looking at supplemental spending bill as a war supplemental, when in fact it is an “emergency” supplemental. Well, just so everyone is clear, below I pasted in the definition of “emergency” as used by applicable section (502) of the FY07 budget resolution. And I’ve attached our highlighted provisions from the Supplemental.

Hmm – sudden, urgent, unforeseen, temporary. How unforeseen is $74 million for peanut storage, when the funds aren’t to be released before Sep. 30, 2007. Or how urgent is paying off crop & livestock disaster claims from 2005. This is regular spending masquerading as emergencies to avoid budget caps and buy votes for controversial bill.

We’ve also heard that the bill has no earmarks – it actually stipulates that. Here is the definition of earmark from H.Res. 6, the House rules change. Members have stood up and taken credit for provisions in the bill (like Rep. Farr and the Spinach provision), and it is clear that provisions are benefiting an entities (like the NASA Stennis Space Center in MS) and it is clear that these decisions are being made through an extraordinary process.’

Earmark definition and Emergency definition:

Earmark:

“(d) For the purpose of this clause, the term ‘congressional earmark’ means a provision or report language included primarily at the request of a Member, Delegate, Resident Commissioner, or Senator providing, authorizing or recommending a specific amount of discretionary budget authority, credit authority, or other spending authority for a contract, loan, loan guarantee, grant, loan authority, or other expenditure with or to an entity, or targeted to a specific State, locality or Congressional district, other than through a statutory or administrative formula-driven or competitive award process.”

SEC. 502. EMERGENCY CRITERIA.

As used in this title:

(1) The term `emergency’ means a situation that–

(A) requires new budget authority and outlays (or new budget authority and the outlays flowing therefrom) for the prevention or mitigation of, or response to, loss of life or property, or a threat to national security; and

(B) is unanticipated.

(2) The term `unanticipated’ means that the underlying situation is–

(A) Sudden, which means quickly coming into being or not building up over time;

(B) Urgent, which means a pressing and compelling need requiring immediate action;

(C) Unforeseen, which means not predicted or anticipated as an emerging need; and

(D) Temporary, which means not of a permanent duration.