December 19, 2007 | By Nathaniel Ward

	Featured video Watch highlights from Lee Edwards’ talk on 1,000 lectures at The Heritage Foundation. More videos »

The largest spending bill in U.S. history

Big spenders in Congress unveiled the largest spending bill in American history late Sunday night.

Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO) speaks to bloggers at Heritage Tuesday about the omnibus spending bill, in the foreground.

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Congressional appropriators combined all the spending bills Congress has failed to pass into a single, 3,417-page monstrosity that contains more than 11,000 earmarks. And, of course, they expected to pass this omnibus bill—with little or no scrutiny—in the few short days before they leave town for Christmas. It did pass the Senate on Tuesday night, and House approval is expected Wednesday.

But it didn’t pass without scrutiny, as the big spenders had hoped. Heritage Foundation experts were up early and worked all day Monday and Tuesday to highlight the flaws in the legislation.

» Tour the pork projects on your Christmas vacation.

» Find out how Heritage research had an impact in drawing attention to the bill’s defects.

1,000 lectures at The Heritage Foundation

Last week, The Heritage Foundation held its 1,000th lecture at its headquarters on Capitol Hill.

“Over the past quarter of a century,” Heritage historian Lee Edwards said in the 1,001st lecture last Friday, “Heritage has hosted U.S. Presidents; Secretaries of State and Defense; House Speakers and Senate Majority Leaders; prime ministers; Nobel laureates; Vice Presidents and Supreme Court justices; conservatives, libertarians, and neoconservatives; dissidents and former political prisoners; generals and attorneys general; public intellectuals and best-selling authors.”

Edwards, author of The Power of Ideas, a history of The Heritage Foundation, continued: “These men and women compose a pantheon of the most influential conservatives in America in the last part of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st.”

» Watch excerpts of Edwards’ speech online, including his remarks about Friedrich Hayek, Margaret Thatcher, Russell Kirk, Robert Rector on welfare reform, and more.

» Watch the entire speech, which broadcasted live on C-SPAN.

» View an archive of Heritage events going back seven years.

Other Heritage work of note

• Saturday was Bill of Rights Day, and to mark the occasion Heritage’s Joe Postell explains the history and purpose of the Bill of Rights so we can better understand why the Founders enacted these important amendments to the Constitution. The Constitution provides another way to secure American liberties, argues Claremont Institute scholar Charles Kessler in a new Heritage paper: separation of powers. For more information, see The Heritage Guide to the Constitution, edited by Heritage scholar and former Attorney General Ed Meese.

• The Heritage Foundation has been working tirelessly to make sure lawmakers are aware of a looming threat to our military. Unless Congress invests in critical equipment upgrades and maintenance, the military could return to the impotent “hollow force” of the late 1970s.
  
  But there’s good news. Heritage’s Four Percent for Freedom initiative, a project led by Distinguished Fellow Jim Talent to ensure four percent of the nation’s GDP is devoted to exactly this investment, has paid off. Several key policymakers, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have endorsed the concept, and there’s now a resolution in Congress to help make it happen.

• The government has launched a new website, USASpending.gov, to track how taxpayer dollars are spent. Several Heritage departments were involved in ensuring this resource came about, including our government relations and coalition outreach offices and our policy research department. Read more on Heritage’s Insider Online.

• If you use the social networking website Facebook.com, there are two new ways for you to help spread the message of conservative reform online. Heritage has developed two Facebook applications: My Social Security highlights how much money you and your friends are foregoing at retirement because Congress has failed to reform the program; and Heritage in Focus displays the latest issue analysis from Heritage’s experts. Add them to your profile page today!

• A column in African Executive magazine points out how Heritage’s work has global reach. The director of Inter Region Economic Network turned to a Heritage publication, “The Keys to a Successful Presidency,” for ideas on ensuring Kenya has good leadership after its coming elections.

In other news

• The unintended consequences of government energy policy continue to mount. The head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says that the shift toward using crops for bio-fuels—a shift driven in large part by government policies—is causing food supplies to dwindle.
• Congress has temporarily abandoned its misguided plans to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program into a new entitlement, according to reports from Capitol Hill. Instead, the program will be renewed for next year at 2007 levels.
• Congress is expected to pass a patch to the Alternative Minimum Tax, ensuring that millions of Americans will not owe more in taxes next year as current law provides. Best of all, the bill does not include an “offsetting” tax increase—a provision Heritage identified as a big problem.
• Meeting in Indonesia last week, representatives from 190 countries came to a new agreement on global warming. Now will begin a two-year process to establish yet another binding global warming treaty—and if similar treaties have been any guide, this one may do more harm than good.
• Fourteen states have rejected or may reject federal funds for abstinence education. So instead of teaching children to avoid risky behavior altogether, these states would effectively endorse risky behavior while encouraging them to “be safe.”
• Rep. Julia Carson (D-IN) passed away over the weekend. We will keep her and her family in our hearts and prayers.
• Late-night talk-show hosts Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien will defy the writers strike and return to the airwaves after Jan. 1.

Coming up at Heritage

To attend these or any other events at Heritage please RSVP at Heritage’s website.  Or you can view these events live online.  All times are Eastern.

• On Wednesday, Jan. 9 at noon, author Jonah Goldberg discusses his new book, Liberal Fascism:The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.

Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation.

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