As a reporter, it is so easy to rely on summaries of bills prepared by either party.  But that means you just miss all kinds of interesting details by not reading the real bill.  Here is yet another lesson along those lines.

The bill in question is a supplemental spending bill that Democrats want to act on in coming days, one that is already spurring a threat of a filibuster by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK).

When the supplemental passed the House back on March 24, it was six pages long, with a cost of about $6 billion.  It had the following items:

$5.1 billion in disaster relief money for FEMA
$600 million for Summer Youth Jobs programs
$174,000 Widows payment to the wife of Rep. John Murtha (D-PA)
$20 million for Small business loans

The plan also would take unspent money from certain programs to pay for some of the spending:

$111.5 million from the Digital-to-Analog Converter Box Program
$44 million from a Traffic Safety Recycling Program
$362 million from Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) programs

The Senate Appropriations Committee took that same bill, and made it into an 82 page measure that would cost $58.8 billion.  Some of the extras include:

$950 million for an Agricultural Credit Insurance Fund program
$18 million Emergency Forest Restoration
$13.4 billion to compensate Vietnam vets on exposure to Agent Orange
$465 million for humanitarian aid to Haiti
$219.8 million to cancel debts owed by Haiti to the U.S.
$6.18 billion for extra State Department operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Haiti
$33.45 billion for military operations in Afghanistan and more

Of course, there are some extras, like on page 11, a plan that would allow NASA to keep funding contracts related to the Constellation program, which President Obama wants to kill.

"Provided further, That notwithstanding any other provision of law or regulation, funds made available for Constellation in fiscal year 2010 for 'National Aeronautics and Space Administration Exploration' and from previous appropriations for 'National Aeronautics and Space Administration Exploration' shall be available to fund continued performance of Constellation contracts, and performance of such Constellation contracts may not be terminated for convenience by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in fiscal year 2010''

Other items include $13 million for a new radio system for the Capitol Police, $33 million for Defense Health Programs, $94 million for Counter-Drug activities and $68 million for various federal agencies to deal with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

There's also an interesting provision on page 24 that must relate to some maneuver by the Pentagon to get around Congress in the past:

"None of the funds provided in this chapter may be used to finance programs or activities denied by Congress in fiscal years 2009 or 2010 appropriations to the Department of Defense or to initiate a procurement or research, development, test and evaluation new start program without prior written notification to the congressional defense committees."

Here is a little goodie stuffed away on page 30:

"The Federal Highway Administration is exempt from the requirements of 49 U.S.C. 303 and 23 U.S.C. 138 for any highway project to be constructed in the vicinity of the Dallas Floodway, Dallas, Texas."

Work on this bill begins today in the Senate.  Republicans are vowing to force votes to find budget offsets for this spending.