You are hereBlogs / Robert_Naiman's blog / Speaker Pelosi, War Funding Next Week is No "Emergency"
Speaker Pelosi, War Funding Next Week is No "Emergency"
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she is committed to passing an emergency war supplemental before the July Fourth recess, Roll Call reports.
Let us be perfectly clear, as President Obama might say. There is no "emergency" requiring the House to throw another $33 billion into our increasingly bloody and pointless occupation of Afghanistan before we all go off to celebrate the anniversary of our Declaration of Independence from foreign occupation.
This fact - that there is no emergency requiring an immediate appropriation - is absolutely critical, because the claim that there is some "emergency" requiring an immediate infusion of cash, otherwise there will be some new apocalyptic catastrophe, is the means by which the Pentagon and the White House hope to dodge two sets of questions about the war supplemental urgently being asked by Democratic leaders in the House.
Secretary Gates has complained that if the war money is not approved by July 4, the Pentagon might have to do "stupid things" like furlough civilian Pentagon employees. I am not in favor of furloughs, even of Pentagon employees (can we furlough someone who approves breaking into Afghans' homes in the middle of the night and killing pregnant women?), but as "stupid" goes, furloughing Pentagon employees doesn't hold a candle to laying off public school teachers, which is the likely consequence of allowing the Pentagon and the White House dodge their critics in the House.
The war funding proposal has been sitting in the inbox for six months. What kind of "emergency" is that? The $33 billion represents about five percent of the gargantuan Pentagon budget. The Pentagon can live with a little more delay, while we get answers to some urgent questions.
The first set of questions the Pentagon and the White House want to dodge can be crudely summarized as: now that we've dumped McChrystal, what the hell are we doing in Afghanistan?
Yesterday, thirty Members of the House sent a letter to Speaker Pelosi, demanding that the questions about the war raised by Michael Hastings' Rolling Stone article be answered before the House votes on the Pentagon's request for more money.
According to Hastings' article, "Instead of beginning to withdraw troops next year, as Obama promised, the military hopes to ramp up its counterinsurgency campaign even further." A senior military official says, "There's a possibility we could ask for another surge of U.S. forces next summer," which is a pants-on-fire contradiction to the promises made when the last increase of forces was announced. Meanwhile, McChrystal's Chief of Operatons, Maj. Gen. Bill Mayville, said: "It's not going to look like a win...This is going to end in an argument." If it's going to end in an argument anyway - Mayville is surely right - why shed more blood? Don't we have a right and obligation to demand a straightforward and concrete accounting of what the additional bloodshed is purportedly going to achieve?
Ninety-eight Members of the House - almost a quarter - have now signed on to legislation demanding that President Obama establish a timetable for military withdrawal from Afghanistan. Shall the House not debate establishing a timetable for military withdrawal before voting on more money for pointless killing?
The second set of questions the Pentagon and the White House want to dodge can be crudely summarized as: what the hell is the federal government doing about Main Street's economic crisis? While it is not the responsibility of the Pentagon to do something about Main Street's economic crisis, it is the obligation of the Pentagon to defend more Pentagon spending as the best use of public resources, at a time when states and local governments are looking at mass layoffs of public employees, including school teachers.
This is the question that House Appropriations chair David Obey put on the table when he said he would sit on the war appropriation until the White House acted on House Democratic demands to unlock federal money to aid the states in averting a wave of layoffs of teachers and other public employees.
But on money to save teachers' jobs, the White House is still Absent Without Leave, hiding behind the purported threat of a Senate filibuster, just as it did on the public option for health insurance. If it fought for teachers, the White House could win. But it isn't fighting, because unlike the war funding, teachers' jobs are not a White House priority.
If we want this to change, Obey has to be able to make good on his threat. And that means the House has to be willing to call the Pentagon's bluff.
Robert Naiman is Policy Director at Just Foreign Policy.
- Robert_Naiman's blog
- Login or register to post comments
-
- Email this page
- Printer-friendly version
It's DN!'s first headline for June 25th and the part of the video report with clips of Obama and then Gates speaking begins at approximately 1:14 and ends at 2:35. DN!'s text for this is a little below the video.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/25/headlines
Quoting only the start of DN!'s text for what the page cites from Obama's words:
"President Obama has admitted that US troops could remain in Afghanistan in significant numbers long after July 2011, the drawdown date Obama set just six months ago".
Obama didn't use that exact wording, but I believe that what DN! then cites from his words can certainly be understood as inherently meaning that we should not be expecting U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in a near year.
And Gates? Oh, he's just blowing the war horns or beating the war drums as usual. No surprises from him.
I'm not surprised about what either of them said and I've said all along that the U.S. is definitely not expectably pulling out in 2011 or in a near year.
98 members of the House now demanding that the Obama administration set a withdrawal timetable sounds good. I don't think to have read of this many, before.
Why is it the Pentagon's obligation "to defend more Pentagon spending as the best use of public resources, at a time when states and local governments are looking at mass layoffs of public employees, including school teachers"?
Defending more Pentagon spending is to defend demands for more funding of the Pentagon, I believe. If that's what it is, then the Pentagon's spending is on what? Wars, buying more military, war technologies and weapons, military equipment maintenance, et cetera.
How is that going to help states avoid laying off teachers and public employees?
Oh, I think Robert Naiman means that the Pentagon is obligated to encourage the use of its funding for helping to fund the jobs of public employees and teachers; but am not sure. It's a guess.
It must be what he means. If it is, then I wholly agree; but if it isn't, then I'm ... clued out, confused.
That brings an unpleasant thought to mind. I read numerous times over the past several years that many youth wanted to enlist in the military only because of economic poverty and for access to education that they couldn't pay for as civilians; while military enlistment provides wages and recruiters said military service would provided opportunities for acquiring education. And I've also read that bad economic times historically tend to cause more people to want to enlist in the military than would happen at other times.
So, maybe the Obama administration is callous with regards to the issue of teachers being laid off, as well as health care reform and other issues or needs, because of wanting to try to drive more youth into enlisting in the military. It's only a thought or question that came to mind, but it seriously does.
The govt can certainly afford to maintain teacher employment. Teachers, public school teachers anyway, don't earn high incomes.
If the govt lets many teachers get cut when the govt can easily afford to maintain them and the govt is giving hundreds billions of taxpayer dollars to Wall Street robber barons, and well over a trillion dollars, in total, for wars that need to be stopped and which cost a tremendous amount, then I wonder if the govt "elites" are trying to push the country to civil revolution, a serious one. One capable of overthrowing and replacing the rogue govt would be justified, anyway.
It will not likely happen, but it would be justified if it did.
suppose you have a house, and suppose you have a lawn. as part of maintaining the house, you have to mow the lawn.
suppose that all you have to mow the lawn with is a push mower. suppose that you think using a push mower is a big pain in the ass. suppose you don't care about the gas consumption consequences of using a gas-powered lawn mower, and suppose that you have money to purchase a gas-powered lawn mower.
well, then: purchasing the lawn mower should be a no brainer, right?
but now suppose you have a kid who is very sick, and needs to go to the doctor, and you don't have health insurance, so you need to pay the doctor. you can buy the lawn mower, or you can pay the doctor.
now the proposal to buy the lawn mower has to be defended against its "opportunity cost" - the fact that as a consequence of buying the lawn mower, the kid doesn't go to the doctor.
it's not enough for the Pentagon to say, "we need more weapons because weapons are cool." the expenditure has to be defended against its opportunity cost.
My views agree with some of these comments already printed. Along with many others comments I've read or heard, my conclusion differs as such: First of all, I accept the known facts that "The Government", (those people that "We the People" elect and keep re-electing), are actually controlled by Corporate America's IBO's. (International Bribery Organizations)
When ever it happens is not important, the fact that it does happen is where the problem lies. Corporate America's IBO's, [Lobbist] are charged with buying and securing the support of elected officials, and most important, their votes in support of CA. And they are very good at this trade.
When legislation debates arise, IBO's simply start their overwhelming attacks on the elected members of the Congress, as well as the White House. Their attacks are relentless until an elected official's "SALE-OUT" point is reached, and that official is thereby under Corporate America's control. Happens everyday in America.
These spending practices by the Pentagon are just the tip of the financial crisis that "We the People" will be paying for. Any local, state or federal office knows that if you don't spend your entire budgeted financial expendures, and hope to slightly to moderate over spending, you will be extremely stressed for the next years budget requests. It's an unwreitten practice through-out government. Very few exceptions exist.
Until there is a significant change of the present day elected officials, with people who are not owned in advance of being elected, and others who promise and commit to the people, and refuse to take outside contributions, and won't fold to Party favors, it's a simple carnage of "MORE OF THE SAME", "We the People being screwed by "The Government.