Want My Support For The War? You’ll Have To Pay For It
No wonder Democrats who are against the war are so upset with the current Democratic leadership…after repeatedly vowing to end the war, then repeatedly vowing not to fund the war without a date certain for withdrawal, the Democrats in the House and Senate are poised to pass a war funding bill with no timetables for withdrawal – for the price of $11 billion in pork:
House Democratic leaders could complete work as soon as Monday on a half-trillion-dollar spending package that will include billions of dollars for the war effort in Iraq without the timelines for the withdrawal of combat forces that President Bush has refused to accept, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said yesterday.
In a complicated deal over the war funds, Democrats will include about $11 billion more in domestic spending than Bush has requested, emergency drought relief for the Southeast and legislation to address the subprime mortgage crisis, Hoyer told a meeting of the Washington Post editorial board.
If the bargain were to become law, it would be the third time since Democrats took control of Congress that they would have failed to force Bush to change course in Iraq and continued to fund a war that they have repeatedly vowed to end. But it would also be the clearest instance yet of the president bowing to a Democratic demand for more money for domestic priorities, an increase that he had promised to reject.
“The way you pass appropriations bills is you get agreement among all the relevant players, among which the president with his veto pen is a very relevant player,” Hoyer said. “Everybody knows he has no intention of signing anything without money for Iraq, unfettered, without constraints. I think that’s ultimately going to be the result.”
The Democrats plan to take a three-step approach to completing the deal. House leaders are considering an initial allotment of about $30 billion, ostensibly for the war in Afghanistan and some other military needs, which all sides in the deal recognize could be shifted to fund the Iraq war.
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) then would allow Republicans to increase that amount to avert a filibuster of the spending bill in the Senate. The goal of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is $70 billion for the war, more than the $50 billion short-term funding that House Democrats initially proposed but far less than the $196 billion Bush has sought.
The Senate-passed bill would then go to the House for final approval.
Don’t get me wrong – I’d be happy to get war funding squared away, and I’m not naive to the ways of Washington horse-trading. Still, when the subject is our men and women in uniform fighting overseas, one might be excused for wishing that support for the war was more than a bargaining chip for more domestic giveaways.
At least we know the Democrats are cheap dates now…
UPDATE 2:29 p.m.: Apparently, I’m not the only one who feels this way: the director of the Office of Management and Budget is warning the president will veto the bill if it is a vehicle for pork.
The White House budget director warned on Saturday that President Bush was prepared to veto a $500 billion catchall spending bill that Congressional Democrats are assembling to pay for government operations and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The warning from Jim Nussle, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, amounted to a pre-emptive strike in a battle over federal spending that is growing increasingly intense.
Mr. Bush has already vetoed one spending measure, and twice this week he used his presidential platform — once in the Rose Garden and once at a news conference — to criticize lawmakers for failing to send him appropriations bills.
Democrats said Friday that they were working on a package to resolve their longstanding impasse with Mr. Bush by providing him with unfettered money for the war in exchange for more domestic spending.
Mr. Nussle met with Congressional leaders this week in an effort to resolve the impasse. But on Saturday, reacting to news accounts about the plan, he called it fiscally irresponsible.
Though the package is not yet complete and the administration has not seen it, Mr. Nussle sent an e-mail statement to reporters accusing lawmakers of “trying to leverage troop funding for more pork-barrel spending.”
“If presented a bill like the one described in today’s press reports, the president would veto it,” the statement said.
The system is badly broken if this is the best compromise the parties can produce. There is no leadership, no commitment to what is good for America and Americans. No, this is nothing more than every person involved acting as if to say, “if they’re going to get theirs then, dammit, I’m going to get mine!”.
Disappointing, I had hope we were better than this.
We now know what Dems are, we are just haggling over the price. He He
So what are we who don’t approve of the current Bush/Republican Administration to do? Sure, we can get angry with the Democrats, but all that has happened since they have been elected has been limited by 1. George W. Bush’s steadfast resistance to compromise and 2. The same resistance from Minority Republicans on Capitol Hill, who have prevented the Democrats from overriding any Bush veto.
This is all really obvious and fairly easy for the common man to comprehend, yet it is overlooked so often because columnists and reporters are admiring the bark on the trees instead of looking through the forest.
Want change without tit-for-tat? Want unified, coherent and efficient steps to withdrawl finally from Iraq and address other hugely important issues completely ignored by this Administration and Republicans over recent years? Vote in an overwhelming majority of Democrats in Congress and put a Democratic Administration in place once again.
It seems that compromise is long dead on Capitol Hill. It died in the early-to-mid 1990′s. Now we have to slalom down the slope or risk going off the course altogether… Democrat control… Republican control… Democrat control… Republican control…
THAT is the new reality and anything less results in dysfunctionality.
Ummm…well, some of my readers would agree with you. I personally support the war and this administration…I just hate to see support for the war becoming contingent upon ‘pork’ agreements…
I think political candidates should pay for the cost of elections at the local level.