CQ Politics reports on a big spending bill heading for the House floor today:

The measure (HR 2638), which would fund the government through March 6, also includes $22.9 billion in emergency spending for disaster relief. . . .

As expected, the legislation includes the text of three security-related spending bills that will cover all of fiscal 2009: Defense; Homeland Security; and Military Construction-VA. None of the 12 annual appropriations bills has been enacted this year.

. . .

Discretionary appropriations for the three security bills totals $600.6 billion, or about 60 percent of the total discretionary spending Democrats proposed for fiscal 2009.

The legislative vehicle is a fiscal 2008 Homeland Security appropriations bill that was passed by both chambers last year but never taken to conference or enacted. Its old text will be replaced by the provisions outlined Tuesday by House Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey , D-Wis. The new language will technically be a House amendment to the Senate amendment of the original bill — and not subject to further change on the House floor.

There you have it. At least* $5,800 per U.S. family ($1,800 per person) spent by a bill whose new language hasn’t been published yet, that got no hearings or committee markups, and that will not be subject to amendment on the floor.

Here’s the vote on H.R. 2638, the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2008. Click to vote, comment, learn more, or edit the wiki article about the bill. (Mind you, the information currently on that page pertains only to the DHS funding bill for last year. We will update cost figures and summary information as it becomes available.)

(*The figure is our estimate based on the $600.6 billion reported figure, which does not include money for running all the other parts of the government until March, and which excludes “mandatory” spending which, according to a popular fiction in the budgeting world, the government can’t not spend.)