P
PissingOffTheLeft@excite.com
Guest
(Democ)RAT SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE NANCY SPREADS HER BUSH FOR BUSH. YOU
RATS SHOULD REALLY ENJOY THIS ONE!
"Pelosi's Bench Rolls Over on Iraq"
http://www.observer.com/2007/swamp-things-pelosi-bench-rolls-over
Gullible voters keen to treat the onset of the 2008 primary season as
a hale sign of life in the American democratic system had best avert
their gaze from Capitol Hill this week. For as Congress winds down the
year's business with earmark-laden appropriations bills and unsightly
cave-ins to Bush prerogative after Bush prerogative, the governing
metaphor is not the campaign scene's notorious horse race--something
that, for all its by-the-numbers familiarity, at least connotes
forward motion. The most fitting template for Congress, rather, is the
La Brea Tar Pits--a place where doomed life-forms absently topple into
the sticky abyss, with only their outward frames preserved for puzzled
generations centuries down the line.
The Democrats now masterminding the 110th Congress, after all, stunned
observers last November by sweeping into majorities in both the House
and Senate on vows to end the dismal U.S. engagement in Iraq and bring
desperately needed honesty and transparency to government. Little more
than a year later, Nancy Pelosi's House and Harry Reid's Senate have,
after much righteous huffing and puffing, rolled over on all the White
House's war-funding measures, failing to approve any timeline for a
troop withdrawal from Iraq. The latest Congressional timeline appeared
under the magisterial title, "The Orderly and Responsible Iraq
Redeployment Appropriations Act." But after the House passed it, the
Senate proved neither orderly nor responsible enough to defeat a
cloture motion. So after entertaining more than a dozen legislative
proposals for exit strategies and timelines, the Democratic 110th has
functioned in exactly the same fashion as its Republican predecessors--
the only difference being that the G.O.P. majorities moved war-funding
measures with the alacrity of short-order cooks, whereas Ms. Pelosi's
Democrats seem to favor the slow food movement.
By her own admission, Ms. Pelosi underestimated how deeply her
Republican colleagues were invested in the continued occupation of
Iraq. At a recent press conference, the speaker marveled that they
hadn't "shared the view of so many of our people that we needed a new
direction in Iraq"; that in fact Republicans "like" the war,
politically speaking--and so she's reluctantly concluded "that this is
not just George Bush's war. This is the war of Republicans in
Congress."
As is typical of Beltway news cycles, Ms. Pelosi's comments sparked a
meaningless furor over the idea of her loyal opposition liking the
war. And so--fortunately for her--she had to issue a mild clarification,
permitting the whole thing to blow over before anyone gave much
thought to how dunderheaded the substance of this appraisal was.
Surely no other recent speaker assumed, coming into power, that the
majority party would automatically win consent from the new minority
party solely on the grounds that "so many of our people" would nudge
them that way. How had Ms. Pelosi been occupying herself in 2002, when
Karl Rove's campaign machine used the mythic threat of a WMD-armed
Iraq to cruise to historic pickups in a midterm cycle? Had she napped
through the gruesome 9/11 mournography of the G.O.P.'s 2004 New York
convention?
Of course "this is the war of Republicans in Congress"; it's how many
of them managed to hang on to their jobs. Expecting that dynamic to
magically change based on the '06 midterm results is tantamount to
making the voters do the Democratic leadership's job. Apparently, Ms.
Pelosi thinks that the shiny '06 mandate functions as a get-out-of-
conference card that will spare them the hard work of arm-twisting and
deal-brokering to win some progress toward a pullout--and facing up to
the hard political consequences of getting an actual troop withdrawal
on track. Even Dick Cheney, who for all his executive branch blood
lust remains a close student of House power plays, recently told a
trio of interviewers from the Politico that he'd been astonished at
the failure of the Democrats to wield any "big stick" in the Iraq
funding battles. "I'm frankly surprised at why, after all of the
efforts they've made to try to hook up various provisions on Iraq to
the spending bill, they've been unsuccessful."
Meanwhile, as major party leaders have been professing all this
surprise at each other, the all-too-familiar appropriations on the
Hill grind on as they always have. Yes, Congress did enact ballyhooed
new disclosure rules to bring more of the grisly practice of earmarking
--i.e., the last-minute introduction of parochial spending projects
likely to enhance an incumbent lawmaker's reelection prospects into
the parliamentary cluster**** known as the appropriations process. But
that's done nothing to slow the brisk trade in earmarking--especially
for appropriations subcommittee lords such as Pennsylvania Democrat
Jack Murtha and Democrats who narrowly took seats from the G.O.P. side
last cycle. As my CQ colleague Jonathan Allen has reported, the
Appropriations Committee fielded more than 33,000 earmarks request
from lawmakers this year. But even Congress can only sluice so much
pork into awaiting home-district barrels; the Appropriations Committee
only summoned the scratch for one-fifth of this year's earmark
requests. When the House Appropriations chairman made the impolitic
suggestion of meeting the White House's proposed discretionary
spending cap of $933 billion by simply pulling the plug on all pending
earmarks, he was all but hooted off the stage--by Congressional leaders
of both parties. Indeed, just as the appropriations melee was heaving
into its final phase, the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell--a
lawmaker who's never met an industry PAC or special-interest
boondoggle he didn't adore--was already airing campaign ads in his home
state of Kentucky touting his prowess in pulling down some $200
million in earmarks.
Mr. McConnell's chief enforcer, the outgoing minority whip, Trent
Lott, tried a bit more subtly to depict Obey's proposal as an affront
to singing-senator-style chamber decorum. "All it would do is make
people mad and delay everything," Mr. Lott pouted. And Ms. Pelosi is
falling incoherently into line as it seems only she can. As Congress
prepared on Monday to hit most every item on the White House's wish
list--including a likely Senate amendment for $70 billion in
unconditional war funding, the speaker burbled that the appropriations
package "will meet the standards we talked about, which is the
president's number, our priorities." In other words: Whatever, we got
the system juiced for the next election cycle, and put off any real
fiscal reckonings into the next fiscal year.
And they say that bipartisanship is dead?
RATS SHOULD REALLY ENJOY THIS ONE!
"Pelosi's Bench Rolls Over on Iraq"
http://www.observer.com/2007/swamp-things-pelosi-bench-rolls-over
Gullible voters keen to treat the onset of the 2008 primary season as
a hale sign of life in the American democratic system had best avert
their gaze from Capitol Hill this week. For as Congress winds down the
year's business with earmark-laden appropriations bills and unsightly
cave-ins to Bush prerogative after Bush prerogative, the governing
metaphor is not the campaign scene's notorious horse race--something
that, for all its by-the-numbers familiarity, at least connotes
forward motion. The most fitting template for Congress, rather, is the
La Brea Tar Pits--a place where doomed life-forms absently topple into
the sticky abyss, with only their outward frames preserved for puzzled
generations centuries down the line.
The Democrats now masterminding the 110th Congress, after all, stunned
observers last November by sweeping into majorities in both the House
and Senate on vows to end the dismal U.S. engagement in Iraq and bring
desperately needed honesty and transparency to government. Little more
than a year later, Nancy Pelosi's House and Harry Reid's Senate have,
after much righteous huffing and puffing, rolled over on all the White
House's war-funding measures, failing to approve any timeline for a
troop withdrawal from Iraq. The latest Congressional timeline appeared
under the magisterial title, "The Orderly and Responsible Iraq
Redeployment Appropriations Act." But after the House passed it, the
Senate proved neither orderly nor responsible enough to defeat a
cloture motion. So after entertaining more than a dozen legislative
proposals for exit strategies and timelines, the Democratic 110th has
functioned in exactly the same fashion as its Republican predecessors--
the only difference being that the G.O.P. majorities moved war-funding
measures with the alacrity of short-order cooks, whereas Ms. Pelosi's
Democrats seem to favor the slow food movement.
By her own admission, Ms. Pelosi underestimated how deeply her
Republican colleagues were invested in the continued occupation of
Iraq. At a recent press conference, the speaker marveled that they
hadn't "shared the view of so many of our people that we needed a new
direction in Iraq"; that in fact Republicans "like" the war,
politically speaking--and so she's reluctantly concluded "that this is
not just George Bush's war. This is the war of Republicans in
Congress."
As is typical of Beltway news cycles, Ms. Pelosi's comments sparked a
meaningless furor over the idea of her loyal opposition liking the
war. And so--fortunately for her--she had to issue a mild clarification,
permitting the whole thing to blow over before anyone gave much
thought to how dunderheaded the substance of this appraisal was.
Surely no other recent speaker assumed, coming into power, that the
majority party would automatically win consent from the new minority
party solely on the grounds that "so many of our people" would nudge
them that way. How had Ms. Pelosi been occupying herself in 2002, when
Karl Rove's campaign machine used the mythic threat of a WMD-armed
Iraq to cruise to historic pickups in a midterm cycle? Had she napped
through the gruesome 9/11 mournography of the G.O.P.'s 2004 New York
convention?
Of course "this is the war of Republicans in Congress"; it's how many
of them managed to hang on to their jobs. Expecting that dynamic to
magically change based on the '06 midterm results is tantamount to
making the voters do the Democratic leadership's job. Apparently, Ms.
Pelosi thinks that the shiny '06 mandate functions as a get-out-of-
conference card that will spare them the hard work of arm-twisting and
deal-brokering to win some progress toward a pullout--and facing up to
the hard political consequences of getting an actual troop withdrawal
on track. Even Dick Cheney, who for all his executive branch blood
lust remains a close student of House power plays, recently told a
trio of interviewers from the Politico that he'd been astonished at
the failure of the Democrats to wield any "big stick" in the Iraq
funding battles. "I'm frankly surprised at why, after all of the
efforts they've made to try to hook up various provisions on Iraq to
the spending bill, they've been unsuccessful."
Meanwhile, as major party leaders have been professing all this
surprise at each other, the all-too-familiar appropriations on the
Hill grind on as they always have. Yes, Congress did enact ballyhooed
new disclosure rules to bring more of the grisly practice of earmarking
--i.e., the last-minute introduction of parochial spending projects
likely to enhance an incumbent lawmaker's reelection prospects into
the parliamentary cluster**** known as the appropriations process. But
that's done nothing to slow the brisk trade in earmarking--especially
for appropriations subcommittee lords such as Pennsylvania Democrat
Jack Murtha and Democrats who narrowly took seats from the G.O.P. side
last cycle. As my CQ colleague Jonathan Allen has reported, the
Appropriations Committee fielded more than 33,000 earmarks request
from lawmakers this year. But even Congress can only sluice so much
pork into awaiting home-district barrels; the Appropriations Committee
only summoned the scratch for one-fifth of this year's earmark
requests. When the House Appropriations chairman made the impolitic
suggestion of meeting the White House's proposed discretionary
spending cap of $933 billion by simply pulling the plug on all pending
earmarks, he was all but hooted off the stage--by Congressional leaders
of both parties. Indeed, just as the appropriations melee was heaving
into its final phase, the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell--a
lawmaker who's never met an industry PAC or special-interest
boondoggle he didn't adore--was already airing campaign ads in his home
state of Kentucky touting his prowess in pulling down some $200
million in earmarks.
Mr. McConnell's chief enforcer, the outgoing minority whip, Trent
Lott, tried a bit more subtly to depict Obey's proposal as an affront
to singing-senator-style chamber decorum. "All it would do is make
people mad and delay everything," Mr. Lott pouted. And Ms. Pelosi is
falling incoherently into line as it seems only she can. As Congress
prepared on Monday to hit most every item on the White House's wish
list--including a likely Senate amendment for $70 billion in
unconditional war funding, the speaker burbled that the appropriations
package "will meet the standards we talked about, which is the
president's number, our priorities." In other words: Whatever, we got
the system juiced for the next election cycle, and put off any real
fiscal reckonings into the next fiscal year.
And they say that bipartisanship is dead?
