This evening, the Democrat's are bringing to the floor their conference report on the emergency war funding bill. As is now well known, the bills passed in the House and the Senate included over $20 billion in unrelated, non-emergency pork and special handouts. In the conference version, much of the same spending remains although some of the more notorious additions were removed like the $74 million for peanut storage and $25 million for shrimp farming.
The Democrats, as admitted by Rep. Charlie Rangel of New York, used much of this unrelated spending to buy votes for their "slow bleed" Iraq strategy. But they are also using it as a tool to spend as much of your money as they can without being subject to normal budgetary restrictions. Considering the Dem's campaign rhetoric to restore "fiscal responsibility" in Washington, I cannot help but call their actions for what they are in this case - hypocritical.
For example, the war funding bill includes $5.8 billion over eleven years in new entitlement spending without providing a way to pay for it. This means the bill should be subject to the Democrat's highly touted "fiscally responsible" pay-as-you-go rule. But what have they done? The Dem's simply waived the ability of Republicans like me to bring up a point of order and hold them to account. Hmmm. I guess they only stand by pay-go when politically beneficial.
This is class act hypocrisy. I hope the American people can see past the hollow rhetoric.