House Dems’ Latest Porkulus Bill

The AP reports ---

House Democrats unveiled a $410 billion spending bill on Monday to keep the government running through the end of the fiscal year, setting up the second political struggle over federal funds in less than a month with Republicans.

The measure includes thousands of earmarks, the pet projects favored by lawmakers but often criticized by the public in opinion polls. There was no official total of the bill's earmarks, which accounted for at least $3.8 billion. (It’s a safe bet the pork in the bill amounts to many times that. But hey, it’s not the House Dems or their voter base that will be stuck with the bill. - - JinC)

The legislation, which includes an increase of roughly 8 percent over spending in the last fiscal year, is expected to clear the House later in the week. (Did the AP include in its reported spending increase percent the $787 billion the House Dems voted for the Obama administration to spend? I’m betting “No.” What about you? )

Democrats defended the spending increases, saying they were needed to make up for cuts enacted in recent years or proposed a year ago by then-President George W. Bush in health, education, energy and other programs.

Republicans countered that the spending in the bill far outpaced inflation, and amounted to much higher increases when combined with spending in the stimulus legislation that President Barack Obama signed last week.

In a letter to top Democratic leaders, the GOP leadership called for a spending freeze, a step they said would point toward a "new standard of fiscal discipline."

Either way, the bill advanced less than one week after Obama signed the $787 billion economic stimulus bill that all Republicans in Congress opposed except for three moderate GOP senators. . . .

The entire AP story’s here.

Question: Why does the AP call the only three GOP senators and only three GOP members of the Congress who voted for the Dems’ $787 bil deficit spending porkulus bill “moderate?"

Aren’t the three at the extreme of the GOP?

Sure, but if you’re aligned, as the AP is, with the liberal/leftist Dems, you’ll spin and tell readers the three – Specter, Collins and Snowe - are “moderate.”

The AP's spinning the news to fit its views.