A $46 Billion Slap In The Face

The irony of President Bush's demand on Monday [1] for $46 billion in additional emergency spending for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan—an irony missed by most of the news media—is that it occurred as the Senate debated an appropriations bill for domestic education, labor and human services programs that President Bush has threatened to veto—over a comparatively minor $9.6 billion.

Once again, we have an administration fighting over what is, in the scale of a $3 trillion budget, dimes and quarters when it comes to needs of ordinary families, while demanding Congress shovel money, no questions asked, to feed the war machine in the Middle East. For anyone who really cares about spending priorities, the President's statement was a $46 billion slap in the face of a public sick of his budget posturing.

A read through the White House veto threat [2] for the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education appropriations bill, S. 1710, offers a window into the absurdity of the administration's posturing. Among President Bush's objections:

President Bush's request is over and above the nearly $200 billion already spent on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. And that money, in turn, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid noted, is on top of the $450 billion in emergency funds Congress has authorized for the war since it began.

As Reid pointed out, in this quote from The Baltimore Sun's blog [3]:

"President Bush wants us to rubber stamp another $200 billion in war funds - all borrowed money, none of it paid for - for next year alone. But when we sent a bipartisan CHIP bill to his desk to provide health insurance for the children of working families, the President called it too expensive. Let's remember, every dime of the money for CHIP was paid for.
"It's no wonder the American people are frustrated. Democrats continue to fight for America's priorities while the President continues investing only in his failed war strategy - even as most of his own Pentagon leadership is now on record saying that our ground forces are stretched dangerously thin because of the current Iraq strategy."

President Bush has painted congressional Democrats as the ones stymieing forward movement on the federal budget, but in this case it is Senate Democrats who have shown the most willingness to compromise. One of President Bush's objections was expanded funding for embryonic stem-cell research. According to Congressional Quarterly [4], Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who is chairman of the appropriations subcommittee handling the Labor-Health and Human Services budget, said Democrats are dropping that provision.

"So we have met the president halfway, and we're hopeful that he will join us in this spirit of bipartisan compromise," Harkin said. "I am an optimist, and I hold out hope that if the president examines the substance of the bill, he will see that the additional funding above his budget request goes to essential programs and services that have been shortchanged in recent years."

If President Bush was really concerned about excessive spending on ineffectual programs, he would allow a more critical eye on the money poured into an enterprise that has not enhanced our security but has proven to be a feast for corrupt private contractors and others who profit from war and destruction.

If he wants to use a vote on this $46 billion as a test of who really "supports the troops," let him. House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey has said he will not take up the request until next year, and when he does, he's promised to add language mandating a withdrawal timetable. Legislators with a backbone and a commitment to the will of the majority of the American people will vote for that money—to fund the quick end of the war and the return of the troops to their families.