As I wrote earlier this month, the Congress took away much of the fun that I usually have in July, by sidetracking most of the usual work on next year's budget.

Today, the House will approve the first spending bill for the next fiscal year, for Military Construction and Quality of Life - in other words, projects for military bases, housing, etc.

The $72 billion plan is a popular one with members of both parties, as it combines help for veterans, with local military base construction projects, two sure-fire winners for the folks back home.

The bill contains 510 budget earmarks - but most of those were put in the bill by the Pentagon.  103 earmarks were put in the bill by lawmakers.

The House will vote Friday on an effort to get rid of all those Congressional earmarks, as Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) will continue his often lonely fight to rein in the federal budget.

"Military funding ought to be distributed based on the needs of our military, not by the congressional spoils system," said Flake.

Don't expect Flake to win.  If he gets 100 votes I will be surprised.

This first spending bill has also brought to light something that I found very interesting from a Congressional Insider's point of view.

Earlier this year, President Bush signed an executive order that told his Cabinet agencies not to heed the opinion of Congress on how money should be spent on certain programs, if those aren't included in the legislative language of the bill.

The spending bills are usually accompanied by a report, which then details how Congress wants money spent - often on local home state programs.

So, if you went looking through the bill for the $5 million that went to build a parking lot somewhere, you weren't going to find it unless you went through the bill's report line by line.

But things changed with the President's declaration, and the Congress responded in this first appropriations bill.

"The Committee is concerned that Executive Order 13457 effectively gives the Administration line-item veto authority over military construction projects funded in this bill," said the report on HR 6599.

"Therefore, the Committee has included bill language incorporating the military construction projects specified in the table entitled "Military Construction" that appear on pages 93 through 100 into the text of the bill by reference."

Let me translate.

Congress is worried that the Pentagon might not listen to the usual report language on where to spend some of that Military Construction money.  So, they are basically making it part of the bill, giving it the force of law.

And there on page two of the bill, "Provided further, That the amount appropriated in this paragraph shall be for the projects and activities, and in the amounts specified under the headings "Army" in the table entitled "Military Construction" in the report of the Committee on Appropriations of the House of Representatives to accompany this bill."

Most likely, this sounds like gibberish to those outside the Beltway.  But to someone who has read through appropriation bills for over 20 years, this is a big change.

Congress is worried that the bureaucrats won't listen to how lawmakers want money spent in this appropriations bill's report, so they are going to basically make those provisions law.

That probably should have been the way this was done years ago.  A small step forward.

Today, the House will approve this bill, meaning only 11 more have to be finished by the end of the fiscal year on September 30.

Oh, and the Senate must approve all twelve as well.

And then they must be conferenced between the House and Senate.

In other words, most of next year's budget will be punted to the next Congress.