When Dirty Politics Fail
Harry Reid, the most ineffective Senate leader in recent memory, has managed - yet again - to have one of his dishonest ploys fail. Desperate to pass any of the 13 pork-bloated annual spending bills, Reid tried to couple together a few bills using money for veterans as a sort of human shield to prevent a veto. A funny thing happened on the way to the scam, though. Republicans held firm and forced the decoupling of the bills. Reid continues to stuff the spending bills with glistening gobbets of fresh pork, though. Not one of the spending bills has passed yet.
The reason that not one of 13 appropriations bills had reached the president's desk was Bush's threat to veto at least 10 of them. Doubting their ability to override these vetoes, Democratic leaders conjured up combined packages that Bush would dare not veto. The earmark-heavy appropriations bill for the Labor and Health and Human Services (HHS) departments would be joined with the Defense bill, which funds Iraq, and with Military Construction, which contains money for veterans.
The Defense component was quickly removed after protests by Rep. John Murtha, influential chairman of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee. But plans for a Labor-HHS merger with Military Construction went forward. A stand-alone bill containing veterans money had passed the House, 409 to 2, on June 15, and a similar measure got Senate approval, 92 to 1, on Sept. 6 — measures Bush would sign. But Democrats held off final passage so they could meld it with Labor-HHS, which they did in last week's Senate-House conference report.
At the same time, the pork content of Labor-HHS grew. Citizens Against Government Waste found 2,274 earmarks in the bill worth $1 billion. They include $1.5 million for the AFL-CIO Working for America Institute and $2.2 million for the AFL-CIO Appalachian Council. Democratic Sens. Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad, North Dakota's two professed budget balancers, got $1 million for Bismarck State College. Sen. Arlen Specter, the Senate Labor-HHS Appropriations subcommittee's ranking Republican, procured $882,025 for "abstinence education" in his home state of Pennsylvania.
The conference report's "compromise" Labor-HHS bill at $151 billion was actually more expensive than either the House or Senate version. It contains a $1 million earmark for a Thomas Daschle Center for Public Service and Representative Democracy at South Dakota State University to honor the former Senate majority leader who was defeated for re-election in 2004. Sponsored by Senate President Pro Tem Robert Byrd and Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Daschle Center was one of nine earmarks "airdropped" into the final version by the Senate-House conference without being passed by either the Senate or House. Silently removed from the bill by the conference report was the prohibition, passed by the Senate in a rare defeat for earmarkers, against spending $1 million for the Woodstock "hippies" museum in Bethel, N.Y.
Reid was absolutely furious that his ploy had failed and resorted to calling Republicans "sheep and chickens", a completely unseemly way for a Senate leader to act. But completely in character for a bumbling, inept hack politician like Reid. This hometown Newspaper once likened Reid to Bozo the Clown. Which is grossly unfair to Bozo, who was a success in life.
By mockinbird, Monday, 12 November , 2007 @ 4:00 pm
Sen. Reid is more than a Democrat; he’s a dumbass.
By Bleepless, Monday, 12 November , 2007 @ 8:23 pm
One way to cripple this entire fraud would be to limit each and every bill/act to one topic only. This would mean that each chunk of pork would be voted on separately. Not only would it slow down Congress magnificantly, but it would keep those hypocrites from claiming that they hated to vote for all that stuff, but it was attached to something very important.
By FedUp, Tuesday, 13 November , 2007 @ 1:16 am
Another shining example of a case for line-item veto. It just makes me wonder how many lines there are in the ’stealth’ bills. Harry and the others of his ilk - on both sides of the aisle - seem to forget that it’s OUR money that they are spending and WE should have some say in how that is to be done.
By Brian, Tuesday, 13 November , 2007 @ 11:22 am
Dorgan was just kickin ass on the Senate Floor!!!!!