Jo’s Cafe

How to pass a bill in Washington …

You drag out the Pork!!!

With the House poised to vote as early as today on a $124.1 billion budget bill that would end U.S. involvement in Iraq next year, you’d think House leaders would let such a critical decision ride strictly on its merits.

But Democrats are having trouble rounding up votes for the measure. So the leaders are trying to buy votes the old-fashioned way - by luring wavering members with billions of dollars for parochial projects.

[...]

Last January, as soon as Democrats took control of Congress, the House passed new rules designed to curb earmarks, which had exploded under years of Republican rule. Yet here they go again, just 10 weeks later, including an assortment of dubious expenditures in “emergency” legislation to finance the war in Iraq and the wider war on terror:

• $25 million for spinach growers to recoup losses suffered when contaminated spinach sickened nearly 200 people and resulted in three deaths last year. (Instead of rewarding growers, the government would do better to direct money at safety measures to prevent future contamination.)

• $252 million for a government milk program beneficial to dairy farmers, inserted in the bill by Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., chairman of the Appropriations Committee, which wrote the bill.

• $1.5 billion in livestock assistance for producers affected by wildfires or blizzards.

• $500 million to fight wildfires in drought-stricken states if current funds run out.

Top Democrats, including Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, argue that the measure includes no earmarks and that provisions unrelated to the war are aimed at emergencies.

Spinach growers are involved in the “war on terror”? How?

Is the milk pork to help the bill go down better?

And since when did livestock producers need assistance in Iraq? Afghanistan?

Drought? Where? Oh yeah — that’s right, Afghanistan and Iraq are deserts right?

All this is going to do is slow down funds to the soldiers currently in theatre and those getting ready to go. So lets pork out a bill to stop the war, but not worry about helping these troops they are supposedly so concerned about.

Thanks America for voting in the dimwits — how can you sleep at night?

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Linked at: Woman Honor Thyself’s “Tomato or Tomaahto OpenTrackback Weekend“; Outside the Beltway’s “OTB Caption Jam“; Cao’s Blog’s “Sunday OTB“