This article basically sums up what happend with the ridiculous new war funding bill that has oozed out of the House.
We keep reading Congress is "deeply divided" over the war. But that's true even for Democrats. Anti-war "Code Pink" Democrats didn't want to spend anything on the war, while other, more sensible Democrats rightly fretted over looking weak on the war on terror if they sought to pull the troops out.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi bridged the gap by doing what any sensible — and unscrupulous — politician would: She bribed them.
The bill ended up costing $124 billion, $22 billion more than President Bush requested. How's that for Democrats' pledge to be fiscally responsible? Consider it a 20% tip for services rendered by those in Congress who forgot their once-solid scruples and sold out.
We hope the added billions spent — for things such as surplus peanut storage, aid to spinach growers, dairy subsidies and "asbestos abatement" in the U.S. Capitol — will assuage the guilty consciences of those who voted for it.
(By the way, Pelosi & Co. also held some worthy things hostage as well, like disaster and drought relief. But those should have been voted on in separate bills.)
The Democrats have lost whatever tenuous hold they might have had on the claim to be trustworthy on national security issues. They've become a party of political expediency. They voted for the war in 2002, but now that the war has lost popularity they want to cover their posteriors. The very picture of political cowardice.
Pelosi said Friday's vote on war spending and withdrawal marked a "historic day." She's right, though not in the way she thinks. For on that day her party reached its nadir, showing that not even national security stands in the way of Democrats' lust for power and desire to punish those they despise and seek to ruin, even if it means America loses a war.
Read the whole thing.
Source: IBD Editorials: A Vote Too Far
