Those ‘riders’ on the budget bill… (Be prepared for a shock)
How many of us know what they actually are? Oh sure, we know about NPR and Greenhouse Gasses. But there are MASSES of them and they are absolutely demented.
There are dozens of “riders” about the environment, defunding everything from the Wetlands Reserve Program to the Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Act. No more Weatherization Assistance Program. Trash a bunch of environmental programs in California. No enforcement of water quality standards in Florida. No funds to go to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
It prevents various White House positions from being funded. No Environment Czar (actually, no “Czar” positions at all, all to be defunded immediately). No White House director of Health Care reform. No funding for anybody at all involved in any possible implementation of the health care reform law.
No more transferring prisoners from Guantanamo. No more constructing facilities to house the ones who are there.
No funding for immigrant integration programs.
No more collecting information on multiple sales of guns to the same person.
Defunds Sustainable Communities Initiative.
NASA is prohibited from collaborating with China (??).
The whole document is outrageous. I feel like it must be a hoax. If not, then shut down the bloody government. This sort of thing is not supposed to happen on budget “riders.”