By Chris Strohm, CongressDaily
The House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee Wednesday approved a fiscal 2009 Homeland Security appropriations bill that gives the department $39.9 billion in discretionary spending, including a boost in funding for politically popular grant programs and efforts to find and deport criminal illegal immigrants inside the United States. The bill, approved unanimously by voice vote, gives the department about $2.2 billion more than Congress allocated for the current fiscal year. The funding is also about $2.3 billion more than the department requested. 'We believe that we've put together a very defendable, credible bill,' said House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman David Price, D-N.C. The bill includes about 100 earmarks totaling about $200 million, primarily in the area of pre-disaster mitigation and emergency operations programs, according to Price and an aide. The subcommittee would not release the list of earmarks and the lawmakers who requested them. Price said the funding for earmarks is about equal to the fiscal 2008 spending bill.
