Can't the Blue Dogs see their hypocrisy? After all their free passes they gave hundreds of billions for Iraq war funding, now they are threatening to hold up Jim Webb's GI Bill because the couple billion it could potentially cost is not offset with revenues. [UPDATE: The cost is apparently $50 billion initially, and $4 billion per year thereafter. This doesn't change the fact that this program is one that will pay for itself over time and that it would be very shortsided to subject it to pay-go rules, even if the war expenses were under the same restrictions, which they are not]
Jane Harman, my Blue Dog representative in a very heavily Democratic district, is of course quoted in the article (is there an article about Blue Dogs where she isn't quoted?), and she doesn't seem to be very bothered about this. (Has she ever spoken out against Blue Dogs?)
"Hopefully, it will be worked out," said Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), a Blue Dog member. "There are conversations going on right now."
Considering she's got a press releasesupporting the bill on her official website in which she's quoted saying
Our troops should be welcomed back as heroes and provided the smoothest possible transition to civilian life. Free college education is the least we can do
you'd think she could at least muster up a little opposition to her fellow Blue Dogs subjecting this program to "pay-as-you-go" rules after giving the Iraq war and its hundreds of billions in emergency supplementals a free pass.
It's a foregone conclusion that Pelosi's going to give Bush what he wants on the war funding. At a minimum, veterans should get a real GI bill out of it. Why can't Jane Harman and the rest of the Blue Dogs understand the importance of that?