This story bothers me a lot.
House Democratic leaders are offering billions in federal funds for lawmakers' pet projects large and small to secure enough votes this week to pass an Iraq funding bill that would end the war next year.
It's a little more complicated than that, and it's a little more complicated than Republican pork versus Democratic pork -- a lot of what the Democrats have tied to this bill seems to be funding for necessary projects that will have a direct impact on the lives of farmers, the dispossessed on the Gulf Coast, and everyday people. (Probably one reason the administration is against it. Let's see, Halliburton is moving to where?)
To me, it points to a systemic problem with Congress and the government as a whole. Granted, this country is supposed to be about compromise (or at least, it used to be), but there's something about this example of it that gets my back up. Maybe I still hold a naive set of expectations for our leadership, in spite of everything I've seen.
I'm also not too thrilled with WaPo's rather facile analysis. Too easy, too pat. (Although the quote from Musgrave's staff is choice. Coming from the office of one of the least effective members of Congress, who firmly believes that the sanctity of marriage is the most important issue facing the country, that's really a joke. If she's such hot shit, why wasn't she able to get some drought relief measure passed while the Republicans held a majority? Maybe because she didn't try?)
1 comment:
"House GOP leaders have accused Democratic leaders of flagrant vote-buying." As opposed to what -- lockstep Christianist neoconservative support of the most morally and ethically bankrupt administration this country has ever seen? And the White House -- the WHITE HOUSE -- has the unmitigated gall to complain about pork? and signal intent to veto? Well, I do just love it. I can't wait to see the reaction among the, what, 12% of the population who still think Bush is g-d's gift to the world when he vetoes the supplemental that's supposed to be supporting the troops. It doesn't seem to have occurred to WaPo to characterize any of this "extra" funding as dealing with matters that were urgent a year and two years and three years ago but got buried under the Repubs' sabre rattling, and that's what I find "unconscionable", not the fact that the money's being added to a supplemental budget that is already over $100 billion (with a B).
I'm really, really tired of people who don't understand that all of politics is compromise (like those who voted for Nader because he really, really, really represented something different from the two parties). If they don't like compromise, perhaps they should be living in their own little fiefdoms, each of them completely in control of however much acreage they can amass, and each of them trying to get water, and roads, and protection, and food, and income without help from the government.
All buttons have now been pushed and my crankies are definitely bunched up.
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