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Hater Depot
Joined: 29 Mar 2005
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 Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2009 5:13 pm Post subject: Earmarks in US defense bill |
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http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/12/18/defense-bill-raids-personnel-funds-to-pay-for-weapons/
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The scheme is the same every year, regardless of who is in the majority: Congress quietly shoves in earmarks for unnecessary and ridiculously expensive weapons programs, and pays for them by gutting the existing budgets for actual soldiers.
What most people don�t understand about earmarks is that they are not achieved by simply adding to the top number for the whole federal budget. Earmarks have to come out of the approved number for that particular appropriations bill. So if you want a highway earmark, the money has to come out of some other highway program.
In the defense bill, it usually works like this: Congress sticks in a few extra airplanes or ships as a handout to this or that member, usually in exchange for his vote somewhere else on some other issue. To pay for those earmarks, the favored targets for cutting are usually two parts of the defense bill: Personnel (i.e. military pay) and Operations and Maintenance (which includes such things as body armor, equipment, food, training, and fuel). Those of you who wondered over the years how it could be that soldiers in Iraq could somehow be left without body armor, well, here�s your explanation. They usually took the armor off those kids in order to pay off some congressman with an extra helicopter or two. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2009 5:45 pm Post subject: |
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While it can be frustrating, it is how legislation has always been passed. Eugene Robinson had a good piece about it this week.
"As the attempt to pass meaningful health care reform stumbles oafishly toward home plate, having missed a base or two along the way, it's hard not to repeat Casey Stengel's famous lament about the hapless 1962 Mets: "You look up and down the bench and you have to say to yourself, 'Can't anybody here play this game?'"
The answer is that some can and some can't.
Nancy Pelosi can play. Faced with adamantine opposition from Republicans, take-no-prisoners exhortation from progressives and foot-dragging equivocation from nervous Blue Dogs, the speaker still managed to get a bill out of the House that included almost everything President Obama wanted, including a public health insurance option...She knows how to count votes, and how to keep them counted.
Pelosi also knows how and when to exercise her many prerogatives...
Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., Mary Landrieu, D-La., Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and, especially, Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut independent, know how to play. Dorgan and Landrieu have been extracting concessions for the folks back home. Nelson has the Senate in knots over abortion. And Lieberman has managed to make himself, for now, the key player in the whole debate."
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/12/18/at_the_plate_some_whiffed_99601.html
The section about Pelosi explains better than anything I've seen anywhere why the right hates her so much. She is very good at her job. That is unforgivable in certain circles.
One thing remarkable about the defense budget this year is that the Republicans tried to filibuster it. I don't know when the Republicans came to hate the military and the wars they otherwise support. |
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thecount
Joined: 10 Nov 2009
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| Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2009 12:10 am Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
One thing remarkable about the defense budget this year is that the Republicans tried to filibuster it. I don't know when the Republicans came to hate the military and the wars they otherwise support. |
It's not that remarkable.
The Republicans had no intention of opposing the bill. The merely wanted to draw it out to delay the health care debate. With a successful filibuster on the spending bill, they push health care voting closer and closer to 2010.
They do NOT want the vote on Christmas. It's a time when the public is most distracted. It's why people are fired on Fridays. Mitigating surroundings.
The Republicans would have eventually allowed the bill to come to an up vote - and most of them would have voted for it. Indeed, most of them DID vote for it. The final vote count was 88-10.
So why, if there were 88 people in favor of the bill, was the Senate only able to get 63 votes to break the filibuster? Delay attempt. Good effort, but apparently not enough.
It'll all be over soon, one way or another. |
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pkang0202
Joined: 09 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2009 12:35 am Post subject: |
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Wasn't Obama supposed to have stopped all the earmarking and "clean up" politics?
Change - YES WE CAN!
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2009 7:24 am Post subject: |
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| pkang0202 wrote: |
Wasn't Obama supposed to have stopped all the earmarking and "clean up" politics?
Change - YES WE CAN!
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I think you're mixing up McCain's promise and Obama's during the election. |
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