Bush Set to Veto Troop Funds

by Taylor Marsh

Standing in front of soldiers and their families for another photo op, the poser in chief took a page out of Rep. Musgrave's use the troops as props manual while taking pot shots at brave House Democrats who have drawn a line in the Iraqi sand. However, Mr. Bush also didn't bother to tell the truth, which is shocking, I know. The money for the troops is in the bill just passed in the House. If Bush doesn't sign it he's the one pulling the rug out from under the troops. And to put a finer point on it, the Democrats were elected in November to do just what they did today. Begin the long hard slog out of Iraq. Someone has to have the courage to do it and it's obvious it isn't the Republicans. The Democrats simply cannot shirk their duty to get this done.

The real danger for Democrats in the Iraq debate isn't that they'll oppose the war too aggressively; it's that they won't oppose it aggressively enough. In 1972, Nixon attacked McGovern as a liberal extremist, which wasn't exactly wrong. But the Democratic Party has become more moderate since the Clinton years, and in the past two presidential elections the G.O.P. has attacked Al Gore and John Kerry less as ideological radicals than as soulless opportunists, weather vanes willing to say whatever it took to win. As pollster Ruy Teixeira has noted, surveys in recent years show Democrats trailing the G.O.P. by more than 20 points when it comes to "know[ing] what they stand for."

Why the Dems Should Go for It

Bush is determined to walk out of the White House with the Iraq war still in progress. Some how he thinks this means he won't get blamed for the ultimate failure. He's wrong.

The president can still swagger and smirk on occasion, but all he can promise now - with 150,000 American troops operating in the middle of a bloody civil war that our actions unleashed - is more of the same. More billions. More dead and wounded Americans. More slaughtered Iraqis. That, and as he told the nation: ''There will be good days and bad days.''

I can promise the president from Texas that this ill-begotten, poorly planned and mismanaged war will be his lasting legacy when, in 22 months, he packs his bags and heads home to the ranch in Crawford.

A broken military, broken laws and broken troops, by Joe Galloway

But it's actually worse than that for Mr. Bush. He refuses to do what the American people want and is willing to cut funding for troops to continue a war in Iraq that long ago became something beyond which the American military and the people are responsible. Saddam is gone. There are no WMDs. The Iraqis have voted and have a government. Our role must now be to train Iraqis.

The right is going to wail about the pork. Are they kidding? The peanut disaster is real, at least to farmers in Georgia. Government has certain responsibilities here at home, too. I'll let Rep. Obey take us out.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday a number of members on the Republican side of the aisle sought to belittle the legislation before us because in addition to funding the needs of the troops in Iraq it contains money to address a number of domestic priorities. To ridicule that legislation, they suggested -- they tried to belittle items such as funding for levees in New Orleans and agriculture disaster payments . And in that they have been joined by editorial writers at papers such as "The Washington Post." Like The Post, the Republican speakers of yesterday indicated that their main objection to this legislation is the way it tries to create pressure to end our military involvement in an Iraqi civil war. Those speakers and the Washington Post editorial writers make no effort to understand why these additional items are there. They simply ridicule them for their own purposes. This bill has my name on it, and I take full responsibility for each and every item in the bill. And despite the comments of my good friend from California suggesting that if I could have written this bill it would be quite different. this was not a bill that was imposed from Nancy Pelosi's Speaker's office. Oh, yes, she was consulted, but it was not concluded until I approved of it, and I take full responsibility of it. A nd I want to be very clear about some of the items that the editorial writers and certain members of this House have been criticizing. Let's start with agriculture. I haven't voted for a farm bill in the last 10 years because I believe that existing farm programs provide way too much funding for a large farmer and way too little farmer for family -- little money for family farmers. Over 70% of the counties in this country were declared disaster areas, not by me but by the President of the United States. And that entitles farmers who have suffered that weather-related disaster to certain forms of compensation. The previous Congress tried to work its way through that problem for well over a year and failed. One time this year we are looking at a bill in the Senate costing $6 billion. Thanks to the efforts of Chairman Peterson on this side of the Capitol, the costs of those Ag programs have been cut by 1/3. I applaud him for making those changes. There is a second criticism being made about the fact that there is some money in here for dairy. You bet there is. Because under the Republican stewardship during the last Congress - or two Congresses ago, actually, in order to use an accounting gimmick, the then majority on the Agriculture Committee arranged to have the dairy program expire one month before every other farm program. that was done only for budget fiction purposes to hide the true cost of the farm bill five years ago. And you bet, in this legislation there is a one-month fix so that when we go into writing the next farm bill dairy will have a chance to compete with other farm programs . I find the Washington Post criticism of this especially interesting since they - since they often squawk about the fact that farm programs gives too much to large farmers. The milk program happens to focus on small farmers, which is why so many large farmers don't like the program. I make no apology for recognizing that that is an inequity that needs to be fixed. Then we have a squawk about spinach. Let me tell you why spinach is in here. You can laugh about it now, but people were dying last year because of an ecoli breakout. Now the FDA did not have the authority to require mandatory recalls of spinach. So what some of these companies did, despite the fact that their product was clean, they voluntarily withdrew their product from the market. that cost them a bundle and brought a lot of people to near bankruptcy. I've heard a lot of conservatives on this floor talk about how outrageous it is when the government engages in an unconstitutional taking. They are usually talking in terms of land or environment. doesn't the government that required or that asked that's people to participate in the withdrawal in order to protect public health, doesn't that government have an obligation to people who exercise their patriotic duty and did what they were asked? I think they do, and that's why this is in there. Then there's squawking about agriculture. Well, let me explain why that item is in the bill. In eight states in the union fish farmers woke up one morning and discovered that the federal government had issued something that prevented them from transporting their product state lines because lake trout had been discovered to have septicemia, a fish disease, and if it was allowed to get into other lakes, the great lakes, it could have ruined the entire fish supply. So the government said, you can't sell your fish across state lines. Again, the problem is that the fish that they were prohibited from shipping across state lines was all healthy. In a catch 22 situation if their fish had been diseased, they could have collected under disaster program. But because they were healthy they couldn't collect. So the government put those people out of business. Does the government have an obligation to correct that problem? You better bet you they do. And that's why it's in this bill.

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