I wanted to mention the following story yesterday, only for the simple purpose of giving myself credit for seeing through the sham bill the house Democrats used to get funding for escalating our efforts in Afghanistan, while those same politicians ran on platforms promising to bring all our troops home. But, if I did stick it in, the blog would have been four pages long.
What they did was to not only wrap the additional war costs in a convoluted bill covering all sorts of other things congressfolks wanted, they buried the war costs so far down they didn’t even have to mention them when voting.
In effect, when the House debated a “supplemental spending bill” to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they never cast a single, direct vote on those issues. Most of the debate focused on funds for teachers, Pell Grants, summer jobs and three different ways to extract U.S. forces from Afghanistan. And that’s what happens when so-called leadership is reluctant to vote on something in a contested election year. Their way out is to “vote” on something else.
Since September 11th, Congress approved a series of “emergency supplemental spending bills” paying for military operations overseas, starting in Afghanistan and then Iraq. They know they can’t vote against these packages because they’d be portrayed as “Anti-American” or “voting against the troops.
War bills were easier shortly after 9-11, when Republicans ran the White House and both houses of Congress. But, Democrats control all three today and are primarily anti-war to start with. And though a troop drawdown is underway in Iraq, President Obama did, it seems, promise to focus more attention on Afghanistan. The U.S. and NATO added 40,000 troops there just last year.
But many liberal Democrats want the U.S. to devote its resources instead to education, jobs and other “pressing” social programs as usual. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) said, “Every dollar we spend, every life we waste is a waste. It does not enhance the security of the United States.”
So Nancy Pelosi faced headaches as the Pentagon demanded the money and liberals prepared to say no. “There is unease in our caucus about Afghanistan,” she said last week. Even one of her top lieutenants, Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY) said, “A lot of us very much want to vote no on spending the money and staying there. If we were to win, how can you tell?”
So Democratic leaders had to craft a way to pass the bill, yet not vote directly on the legislation. Pelosi typically dodged when reporters pressed her on what this package could look like, saying, “When the Rules Committee completes its work, we will see what form it will be in. But suffice to say, whatever form it is in, whatever actions we take, our men and women in uniform on the ground will not be lacking in what they need.”
The bill’s “form” was unique, parliamentary in nature, confounding aides, journalists and members trying to decipher exactly what the House was doing. The Senate had already approved the war money in May, so it dispatched the bill to the House. And since the war money was in that package, the House now had a great head start.
The bill title didn’t even mention Afghanistan, Iraq, the military, the Pentagon or the troops, but instead was called “Making emergency supplemental appropriations for disaster relief and summer jobs for fiscal year ending September 30, 2010, and for other purposes.”
Then, the war issue never went to a definitive, up or down vote for passage, nor was there an individual vote on it. Instead, there was a specific vote to add funds for teachers, Pell Grants, summertime jobs and covering natural disasters.
Pelosi later had to appease those opposing the war. Rep. Barbara Lee’s (D-CA) amendment required a withdrawal from Afghanistan. Another would have stricken money for the operation. And others proposed asking the president to create a withdrawal timetable. In short, Congress approved a bill to continue the war while also voting on three proposals to end it.
I guess what it’s come down to is that politicians are so used to lying to constituents and screwing them without compunction; it’s a quite natural occurrence to turn around and screw their political allies and friends as well.
That’s it for today folks.
Adios
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