Yesterday I diaried about how Kent Conrad was going to use Congressional budget authority and rules to start ratcheting up the pressure to end the war by constraining funding options for it.
To my disgust, opposing the war through HONEST accounting is even too much for our heroic Senators. And, adding insult to injury, the deranged wingnuts at Powerline have the Senate Democrats pegged perfectly.
The carnage below the fold.
Yesterday, Kent Conrad proposed the effective but hardly radical idea of Congress using its own budget estimates--instead of the horse crap accounting from Bush's Pentagon--to determine how much money to appropriate to the Iraq effort.
Democrats are considering cutting President Bush's budget $142 billion request for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan next year by $20 billion, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad said Thursday.
The war funding cut would affect the budget year beginning Oct. 1 and is separate from the ongoing debate over Bush's $100 billion request for immediate supplemental funding for Iraq and Afghanistan.
The North Dakota Democrat said he likely will use Congressional Budget Office estimates — instead of the administration's February budget request — as the basis for estimating Iraq and Afghanistan war costs.
The administration asked for $141.7 billion for Fiscal 2008, but assumes only $50 billion for 2009 and no war funding after that.
CBO issued an estimate last month that forecasts 2008 costs of $120 billion for Pentagon operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and military aid for the armies of those two countries. The estimates would drop to $75 billion in 2009 and to $40 billion in 2010.
Congress using its own estimates to determine funding. Seems like a no-brainer, given the urgency of getting us out of Iraq.
Sadly, common sense, honesty, and doing something about Iraq is just too much to ask of Senate Democrats, apparently.
Because
Senate Democrats shot down Conrad's trial balloon in record time!
WASHINGTON - Just hours after floating the idea of cutting $20 billion from President Bush's $142 billion request for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan next year, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., was overruled by fellow Democrats on Thursday.
"It's nothing that any of us are considering," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told reporters.
So, they forced Conrad to go out and say this:
"Our caucus feels strongly that we should go with the president's numbers" on 2008 war costs, Conrad said. He spoke just hours after floating the idea of curbing Bush's request for next year's war budget.
despite his sterling record on budgetary matters and this:
Even the Pentagon acknowledges that its $142 billion 2008 war funding request is simply a best guess of Iraq and Afghanistan costs, and Conrad's proposal didn't earn rebukes from Budget Committee Republicans.
So, the Democrats folded on this before a single Republican even bothered to criticize it.
Lovely.
Normally, if Assrocket and the other wingnuts at Powerline say that the sun will rise in the East, I check my compass.
However, here's Assrocket's and Paul's reaction, and you tell me where they're wrong, because I sure can't.
Less than three months after being swept into office on what they claimed was a tide of anti-Iraq war sentiment, the Democrats are in a state of complete disarray, unable to come up with a policy on the war and fearful of taking responsibility for whatever decisions they may make.
I don't know, I suppose in a pinch they could always try voting for the policies they ran on.
PAUL adds: This is a bizarre and irony-rich situation. If the Democrats are convinced that the war can't be won, then their best strategy is the one they've accidentally adopted thus far -- doing nothing serious to end it -- minus all the false starts that make them look bad. Why? Because if the war is perceived as going badly, the country will be inclined to vote for Democrats. So there's no percentage in shutting the war down and no need to drift left on the issue, since the anti-war vote has nowhere else to go. Interfering with the president's ability to prosecute the war is politically advantageous for the Dems only if they think we can win in Iraq.
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Posted by John at 07:43 PM | |
(You know where to find the link--not gonna give them traffic).
Completing the strangest alignment of beliefs in years, I am forced to agree not only with Powerline, but also with
David Sirota.
I repeat my earlier assertion that Democrats are not serious about ending the war, or even trying to slow it down. The only thing they seem to be serious about doing is undermining the serious people like Jack Murtha in their midst, and doing a "kabuki dance" with the progressive movement whereby they pretend to be serious only to keep the progressive movement's resources flowing their way. In the process, they are very grossly embarrassing themselves and the people who worked so hard to deliver them a majority.
Combine this with the silliness going on in the House, including the rapid repudiation of the Murtha plan, and it's clear that there is a desperate need for leadership and courage in Congress.
I haven't given up on the Democrats, but I'm a lot closer than I'd ever thought I'd be.