Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Battle Over Budget Goes GOP's Way
If the the Senate's numbers for funding regarding the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan pass in the House, the President was won an important battle to fund the troops without any strings attached, and the Democrats in control of Congress have again, broken a promise to end pork spending (the omnibus spending bill has about 9,000 such ear marks worth over $7 Billion) and the Democrats have caved on relatively important matters, yet again. The vote in the Senate for $70 Billion to the troops was 70-25 by the way (the worst of the 42 defeats the Democrats have received on this same issue?)
Democrats again failed to win votes to force removal of U.S. troops or set a nonbinding target to remove most troops by the end of next year.
[...]
Democrats were able to fill in most of the cuts by using the very budgetary sleight of hand lambasted by conservative groups such as the Club for Growth and Citizens Against Government Waste.
The White House, which maintained a hard line for months, has been far more forgiving in recent days, accepting $11 billion in "emergency'' spending for veterans, drought relief, border security and firefighting accounts, among others. Other budget moves added billions more.
"Congress did come down to the president's overall top line,'' White House press secretary Dana Perino said. "And in regards of the emergency spending, most of that spending would have passed on an emergency basis anyway. It's not added into the baseline of the budget.''
I guess we Republicans are better in the minority, although I wouldn't want us to stay there forever.
UPDATE: Welshperson Dafydd at Buig Lizards has a longer account of the rolling over the Democrats are doing and Michelle Malkin has details here and here.
Democrats again failed to win votes to force removal of U.S. troops or set a nonbinding target to remove most troops by the end of next year.
[...]
Democrats were able to fill in most of the cuts by using the very budgetary sleight of hand lambasted by conservative groups such as the Club for Growth and Citizens Against Government Waste.
The White House, which maintained a hard line for months, has been far more forgiving in recent days, accepting $11 billion in "emergency'' spending for veterans, drought relief, border security and firefighting accounts, among others. Other budget moves added billions more.
"Congress did come down to the president's overall top line,'' White House press secretary Dana Perino said. "And in regards of the emergency spending, most of that spending would have passed on an emergency basis anyway. It's not added into the baseline of the budget.''
I guess we Republicans are better in the minority, although I wouldn't want us to stay there forever.
UPDATE: Welshperson Dafydd at Buig Lizards has a longer account of the rolling over the Democrats are doing and Michelle Malkin has details here and here.
Labels: Democratic Congressional Failure
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 6:49 AM 
