It looks like during the second session of the 110th Congress there will only be three completed appropriations bills. There are 12. Members of Congress will pass a “Continuing Resolution” (CR) to fund the government until March 2009. All in all, the leadership of the Democrats during the past two years has been at best poor.

The three winners are Defense, Homeland Security, and Military Construction-VA. They also passed some disaster aid with the bill and gave our military personnel a 3.9% pay raise. They wrapped all this up in a nice package with a total cost around $600 billion.

No need to wait around and waste time back there – because they have campaigning to do! All of the House members and one-third of the senate members are up for re-election in November. The other two-thirds of the senate will be traveling around the country helping their candidates.

According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, there are 2,321 earmarks worth about $6.2 billion.

From what I understand, the nine other appropriations bills will be set at Fiscal Year 2008 levels, so if you have read an article about a project that was slated for funding that did not fall under Defense, Homeland Security, or Military Construction/Veterans Affairs, it probably is not going to happen until at least late in 2009 – if ever.

Soon I imagine we’ll be reading a joint press release from Max Baucus and Jon Tester proclaiming how much they are “bringing back” to Montana. Sadly, their “work” pales in comparison to what North Dakota and South Dakota are getting in this bill.

It looks like North Dakota will get about $66.7 million. South Dakota appears to be getting $54 million just in military construction money. Montana appears to be getting about half that when you total the military construction and defense earmarks.

Malmstrom AFB appears to be getting one earmark, worth about $10 million, for phase one of the weapons storage area, which is needed.

There’s still a little housekeeping to do, like the final passage of the bill in the senate, and the signature of the President, but it appears to be a go.

Now all they need to do is handle the financial crisis.