"In a letter sent to the White House on Monday, House GOP members assured President Bush that they would support his decision to veto the emergency supplemental spending bill. 'We are greatly concerned about the extraneous and excessive non-security related funds contained within the Global War on Terror supplemental spending bill currently under consideration in the Congress,' the letter read. 'If you choose to veto this measure over this spending, we will sustain your veto.'"
The argument that the bill is filled with "Pork" is a spurious one as Kargo X has pointed out.
* 6.7 billion in to help victims of Hurricane Katrina. That includes aid for housing, public infrastructure funding, and aid to Gulf Coast commercial fishermen.
* 4.2 billion in disaster aid for farmers wiped out or hurt by drought and flood. This includes aid to dairy farmers, spinach producers, and peanut growers.
* 2 billion for port, airline, rail, and mass transit security.
* 750 million for the health insurance of American children living in poverty.
So basically Bush and the Republicans are threatening to veto a bill that provides our troops with adequate armor and rest while they remain in harms way, pushes the Iraqis to take serious steps to seek a political solution to resolve the lingering violence, leaves a sufficient force in place to fight al Qaeda, provides for much needed Homeland Security issues such as improving protection of our ports, airlines and railways - and finally begins to address the massive problems left behind by Bush's massive failure to respond during Hurricane Katrina.
Bush's veto threatens all of this, and to hear him state it would place the troops currently in Iraq and Afghanistan in a dangerous, untenable position.
This might be why Sens. Feingold and Reid have responded to Bush's threats by upping the ante with an even more aggressive pull-out bill.
"The bill requires the President to begin safely redeploying U.S. troops from Iraq 120 days from enactment, as required by the emergency supplemental spending bill the Senate passed last week. The bill ends funding for the war, with three narrow exceptions, effective March 31, 2008." Reid states, "If the President vetoes the supplemental appropriations bill and continues to resist changing course in Iraq, I will work to ensure this legislation receives a vote in the Senate in the next work period."
In the midst of all this high-stakes brinksmanship, will Dowd's defection begin a gradual tide of more and more Congres-rats running from the ship?
If this is any indication, the exodus may have already begun via from Crooks.
Today's rat jumping off the sinking ship is Vic Gold, a personal pal of Lynne Cheney's who spills the beans to the Washington Post. Actually all the beans are coming in his soon-to-be-published (this month) book, Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How the Holy-Rollers and the Neo-Cons Destroyed the GOP.
Until then we'll just have to be satisfied with what Gold, a close associate of Bush's father and a true believer from the Barry Goldwater days of conservatism, had to say to the Post:
"For all the Rove-built facade of his being a 'strong' chief executive, George W. Bush has been, by comparison to even hapless Jimmy Carter, the weakest, most out of touch president in modern times," Gold writes. "Think Dan Quayle in cowboy boots."
Gold is even more withering in his observations of Cheney. "A vice president in control is bad enough. Worse yet is a vice president out of control."
For Gold, Cheney brings to mind the adage of Swiss writer Madame de Stael, who wrote, "Men do not change, they unmask themselves." Cheney has a deep streak of paranoia and megalomania, Gold suggests - but he says he did not see it at first.
He was hiding who he really was," Gold says. "He was waiting for an opportunity."
Eventually the drip of defectors may turn into a virtual torrent as the very next one appears that its' going to be George "Slam Dunk" Tenet himself.
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