The nitty-gritty of the fiscal year 2010 spending process is getting under way. By the beginning of the new fiscal year October 1st, Congress is supposed to pass twelve appropriations bills, spending the money in the U.S. treasury on all the operations of the government for the year.

Last week, the House passed the H.R. 2847, the Commerce/Justice/Science spending bill. It spends about $680 per U.S. family on operations of the Department of Commerce, the Department of Justice, and science-related agencies like NASA and the National Science Foundation.

Bills to fund the Department of Homeland Security have been introduced in both the House and Senate. The House bill, H.R. 2892, and the Senate bill, S. 1298, would both spend about $460 per U.S. family to fund the department.

And bills to fund the legislative branch – Congress itself – have also been introduced in both houses of Congress. The House bill – H.R. 2918 – spends about $38 per U.S. family on the operations of Congress. The Senate bill, S. 1294, comes in at about $33.

As you can see from the budget process timetable, Congress is well behind on the annual spending bills – the House Appropriations Committee was supposed to have reported all the spending bills by June 10th, and the House is supposed to finish work on all the bills by the end of the month. But it’s still ahead of schedule compared to other recent Congresses.

The Commerce, Justice, Science appropriations bill (H.R. 2847) has a cost estimate – and it’s heading for the House floor today, or at least this week.

The bill would spend about $685 per U.S. family on operations of the Department of Commerce, the Department of Justice, and various science-related agencies.

Yesterday, House Resolution 431 was introduced to impeach Samuel B. Kent, a judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.

On Monday, he was sentenced to 33 months in prison. He pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice charges in February, but the origins of the case are in sexual harassment complaints brought against him by court workers.

It isn’t too often that a federal judge is impeached. Kent is the first federal judge in history to be indicted for sexual crimes.

Kent apparently will retire or already has retired from the bench. Impeaching him may be just for show, or it may strip him of retirement benefits that he would otherwise receive.

Here’s the vote on the resolution to impeach Kent. Click to vote, comment, learn more, or edit the wiki article about the resolution.

The array of issues Congress considers never ceases to amaze me.  Witness a new bill, H. Con. Res. 44, which would express the sense of the Congress that the President should pardon Marcus Garvey.

I had heard of Marcus Garvey back when I used to listen to reggae music in high school. (I still do, but just a small collection of dub.) It turns out that Marcus Garvey is a very interesting historical character. Wikipedia has the details.

Apparently, at the behest of J. Edgar Hoover and the “anti-radical” effort of his Justice Department, Garvey was charged with, and convicted of, mail fraud in connection with stock sales of a shipping line called the Black Star Line.

Garvey’s sentence was eventually commuted by President Coolidge, and he was deported to Jamaica. (See? I knew this had something to do with reggae!)

Should Garvey get his pardon? I have no idea. But it’s fun to look at history through a history-making body, today’s U.S. Congress.