Unable to get conservative blue dogs and the out-of-Iraq-now left to
agree on it's merits, Nancy loads up her military spending bill that
_nobody_ likes, with $20 billion in pork payoffs for votes. Both
groups are not cheap, but they do have their price.
Democrats: disciplined. principled. doing the peoples work.
http://tinyurl.com/3afs48
TODAY THE House of Representatives is due to vote on a bill that would
grant $25 million to spinach farmers in California. The legislation
would also appropriate $75 million for peanut storage in Georgia and
$15 million to protect Louisiana rice fields from saltwater. More
substantially, there is $120 million for shrimp and menhaden
fishermen, $250 million for milk subsidies, $500 million for wildfire
suppression and $1.3 billion to build levees in New Orleans.
Altogether the House Democratic leadership has come up with more than
$20 billion in new spending, much of it wasteful subsidies to
agriculture or pork barrel projects aimed at individual members of
Congress. At the tail of all of this logrolling and political bribery
lies this stinger: Representatives who support the bill -- for
whatever reason -- will be voting to require that all U.S. combat
troops leave Iraq by August 2008, regardless of what happens during
the next 17 months or whether U.S. commanders believe a pullout at
that moment protects or endangers U.S. national security, not to
mention the thousands of American trainers and Special Forces troops
who would remain behind.
The Democrats claim to have a mandate from voters to reverse the Bush
administration's policy in Iraq. Yet the leadership is ready to piece
together the votes necessary to force a fateful turn in the war by
using tactics usually dedicated to highway bills or the Army Corps of
Engineers budget. The legislation pays more heed to a handful of
peanut farmers than to the 24 million Iraqis who are living through a
maelstrom initiated by the United States, the outcome of which could
shape the future of the Middle East for decades.
