From the AP wire story on the $463.5B spending bill, set to hit the floor today:

Rep. Jerry Lewis (news, bio, voting record) of California, the Appropriations Committee’s top Republican — displaced as chairman last fall — ripped into the Democrats for rushing the bill to the House floor “without any prior debate whatsoever and without the opportunity to offer even one amendment on the floor.”

Wait a second…why are the Democrats rushing this bill through now? Oh, yeah, that’s because House Republicans didn’t pass their omnibus spending bill by the closing gavel of the 109th congress.

The 109th Congress is packing its bags for good and leaving town today without enacting nine of the 11 appropriations bills that pay for the federal government. It’s a development that has infuriated Democrats, who will have to carry the additional burden of enacting the spending bills when they take control in January, and has left Republicans red-faced.

“They’re going to leave a mess as they go out,” Democratic House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco said Thursday. “It’s really sad. The Republicans never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”

“It’s a spectacular disorder of chaos,” said Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., who will chair the House Appropriations Committee in the 110th Congress. “We will have to run a cleanup brigade.”

My message to every Republican legislator who doesn’t like some earmark that got frozen or cut, stick your amendment in your pipe and smoke it.