Now that the "Emergency" Military Bill is Dead, Can They Please Dispense With the Nonsense and Pass a Funding Bill?

Congress and President Bush both got their two cents in when Congress passed a doomed "emergency" spending bill on the military and their pork projects, and President Bush vetoed it.

Now that the hubris from Round 1 is done, will they please get off their lazy fat asses and pass the original bill as it was written, and without non-military not-emergency earmarks that Pelosi & company used to bribe members of their own party?

The House in particular had better get a move on; their job approval ratings are virtually the same as President Bush's, and every House seat is in play in 2008. Thirty-three Class II U.S. Senate seats are also up for grabs. If they don't do their jobs, they'll be joining President Bush in looking at new career options after 2008.

The military has already begun to make cuts in their equipment maintenance and repair apparatus; this is impacting how quickly used and battle-damaged equipment makes it back onto the battlefield. The troops are relying on this hardware to complete their missions and to keep them alive.

Thousands of the new family of mine & IED-resistant armored vehicles (MRAP) have not been shipped over yet either; many more are halted on the production lines because the funding is part of this hot-potato spending bill.

A mine-resistant Cougar vehicle being tested.

Congress and the President must make haste and table everything else for another time. They shouldn't allow the military to run out of money and not provide the troops with the tools that they need.

Get it done, NOW.

The Hogs Are At the Trough Again: Congress Adds $20 Billion in Pork to Military Emergency Supplemental Bill

Why the &^%# do spinach farmers, peanut storage facilities, and lawmakers who are looking for more office space in Washington, DC, need emergency MILITARY money for??!

Congress has added $20 billion in pork spending to the $105 billion military supplemental bill for DEFINITE non-military uses.

What, is there a new type of peanut-based ammunition that is under development for the military? Spinach for Popeye the United States Marine?

ALL non-military pork should be removed from this bill immediately, and those Congress people who did this should be ashamed of themselves.

Katrina relief, port security, Veterans Administration affairs, national disaster preparedness, avian flu preparation and other important national issues DO deserve to be discussed and financed, but NOT as part of this military bill. They should be discussed under their OWN bills and free of additional non-related pork.

OINK!! OINK!! OINK!!

Democrats on Verge of Breaking Promise Not to Cut Funding to Troops in Iraq

The Democrats in Congress are on the verge of breaking their promise not to defund the troops in Iraq. This is hardly a surprise given many ran on anti-war platforms. And their defeatist Republican lap-dog colleagues are too weak and ineffectual to disagree with them. I believe de-funding was always inevitable--it's what the Democratic majority wanted all along.

But still, to cut off reinforcements and bullets and equipment to the soldiers who are over there now is irresponsible. And Congress will be unable to keep dodging their collective responsibility in authorizing the war in the first place. Their votes gave Bush the authority to invade Iraq, whether his intel was good or not.

They keep saying they are a co-equal branch of government, yet they clearly don't want to take their share of the blame. They're co-equal all right, but only to a point.

The military needs to complete their mission and soon. We have bigger fish to fry and Iraq is taking up too much time, attention and resources. Blindly cutting their funding to bring them home in six months without a measure of success will only make the situation worse, not better.

All that will happen is the next President will have the unenviable task of sending troops back in once terror groups use Iraq the same way they used Afghanistan to attack New York and Washington. And Congress will blame Bush for that too, for stopping the war too soon.

And this will be after Congress and the next Administration decide to slash military rebuilding funds, too.

What a vicious cycle we find ourselves facing.