The Democrat-led United States Senate sent a bill worth $634 billion to President Bush to sign. Unlike what some may have hoped, the bill is not the one aimed at reviving the U.S. economy; it’s goal is to keep the federal government active until the end of the year. If this bill would not have passed – and it did with 78 lawmakers voting for it and only 12 against – and if Bush does not sign it, Congress risks a lame-duck session after the Nov. 4 election.

Although the amount of the bill is much higher than Bush hoped for, he is expected to sign it nonetheless. White House spokesman Tony Fratto said the bill “stands as a reminder of the failure of the Democratic Congress to fund the government in regular order.” But, he said, it “puts the United States one step closer to ending our dependence on foreign sources of energy” because it ends the ban on offshore drilling and opens up ‘huge reserves of oil shale in the West.’

Most of the money will go to the U.S. Defense Department; a record breaking $488 billion in total. That is an increase of 6%. Most of the money will go to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Both sides negotiated aggressively, resulting in both getting funding for projects they found important. The Democrats, for instance, ‘wrested concessions from the White House on $23 billion for disaster-ravaged states, a doubling of low-income heating subsidies, and smaller spending items such as $24 million more for food shipments to the elderly. ‘

Additionally, the auto industry would receive a nice boost. ‘The loan package for automakers would reward them with $25 billion in below-market loans, costing taxpayers $7.5 billion to subsidize the retooling of plants and development of technologies to help U.S. carmakers to build cleaner, more fuel efficient cars.’

Although the bill still makes it impossible for oil companies to drill in the oil-rich eastern Gulf of Mexico, it is considered a big step forward nonetheless. It would not make drilling in Atlantic federal waters imminent, but allows ‘the government to offer leases in some Atlantic federal waters as early as 2011.’

Bush threatened Democratic lawmakers only a short time ago. He said he would veto the bill if Democrats would not ‘cut the number and cost of pet projects in half or cause agency operating budgets to exceed his request.’ Democrats ignored the warning, however, and it seems that Bush backed down.

A watchdog group, Taxpayers for Common Sense, say that the bill contains 2,322 pet projects totaling $6.6 billion. These ‘pet projects’ are also known as pork.

Sicne $6.6 billion is quite a high number for ‘pet projects,’ it is likely that conservative commentators will blast Bush for signing it (if he does indeed sign it) and, especially, attack Democratic lawmakers for adding so many costly extra projects to the bill. Although they would be right to do so, they should keep in mind that many Republicans voted for the bill, and therefore for the pork, as well.