It's so funny I'm laughing:

Bush quietly signs $373 billion spending bill

Friday, January 23, 2004

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(01-23) 16:25 PST WASHINGTON (AP) --

President Bush signed Friday a $373 billion spending bill for most federal
agencies that allows him to assert he has held annually approved
expenditures to just 3 percent growth for the budget year that still has
eight months left in it. [Read it again --- can you believe this
crap?]

Bush signed the measure, which still made room for increases for education,
aid to countries adopting democratic practices, the FBI and veterans health
care, privately and without ceremony.

"We applaud Congress for passing spending legislation that meets our highest
priorities and holds the line on spending," White House press secretary
Scott McClellan said.

Four months after the Oct. 1 start of the government's fiscal year, the
Senate had rolled over opposition Democrats and voted 65-28 Thursday for the
package. The House had approved the measure in December.

Financing programs from housing and job training to space and biomedical
research, the bill covers 11 Cabinet departments and scores of other
agencies, plus foreign aid and the District of Columbia government, by
combining seven spending bills usually passed separately.

Six other spending measures, including those covering the Pentagon and
Department of Homeland Security, were already enacted.

The administration hopes the bill will provide election-year proof of Bush's
imposition of budget discipline on Washington and strengthen his
administration's claim that it will be able to cut federal deficits in half
in five years. Last year's shortfall was a record $375 billion and this
year's is expected to be about $100 billion higher.

Bush plans to send lawmakers a $2.3 trillion budget for 2005 on Feb. 2. Bush
has said this week that the annually approved spending in that budget would
not be more than 4 percent more than the current year's. On Friday,
McClellan said that to accomplish that, spending on nondefense and
non-homeland security programs would be limited to an average of 1 percent
growth.

Still, many conservatives -- who make up the core of Bush's political
support -- were opposed to what they saw as too many home-district projects
that they consider pork in the omnibus 2004 spending package. Conservatives
have been increasingly critical generally of the Bush administration for
burgeoning deficits and overall federal spending that has grown by 23.7
percent over his three years in office.

"Obviously there's a legislative process," McClellan said Friday. "You don't
get everything you want and there are other things that sometimes are put
in."