As I noted yesterday, Congress gave final passage to the Matthew Shepard Act, an LGBT-inclusive hate crimes bill. This bill was tucked into the defense authorization bill, which is almost always described as a “must-pass” measure. Here’s how the New York Times describes it:

The 68-to-29 vote sends the legislation to President Obama, who has said he supports it.

The measure, attached to an essential military-spending bill, broadens the definition of federal hate crimes to include those committed because of a victim’s gender or gender identity, or sexual orientation. It gives victims the same federal safeguards already afforded to people who are victims of violent crimes because of their race, color, religion or national origin.

The bill will at least give gay rights a step forward. But attaching it to a so-called “must-pass” bill, particularly in this time when the White House is feeling major pressure from the LGBT community, makes it very hard for the President to veto the bill for other reasons. After all, this is a huge bill, authorizing $680 billion in spending. Early on in the Obama Administration, the President and the Defense Secretary took a stand on the defense budget, stripping useless projects that the Pentagon didn’t want. Some of those projects managed to make their way back into the bill, despite a veto threat from Obama. An example is the alternate engine for the F-35 joint strike fighter, which will cost $560 million in taxpayer dollars, most of it going to Rolls-Royce and GE (so don’t expect to see this on MSNBC).

Administration officials have said the president would consider a veto if the funding for the engine threatens the overall F-35 program, but the bill fully funds the Pentagon’s $6 billion request to buy 30 F-35 fighters, built by the Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N).

The bill’s backers hope that inclusion of full funding for the versatile aircraft will be enough to stave off a veto.

A White House spokesman earlier in the day declined to say whether Obama would veto the bill.

This is just one example of the defense pork in the bill, although the biggest waste, funding for more F-22 fighters, was stripped. And there needs to be a conference report, where more pork could potentially make it in there.

But now that it’s less the defense bill and more the LGBT-inclusive hate crimes bill, it gives defense contractors the license to add some more of their useless projects without threat of a politically untenable veto. That’s the downside of adding these kinds of measures, which could probably pass Congress on their own, into “must-pass” bills.