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Will House Dems Oppose a Jobless War Supplemental?
The war supplemental for Afghanistan is expected to come back from the Senate to the House next week - without any kind of timetable for military withdrawal from Afghanistan, and without money to save teachers' jobs attached.
AP reports:
In a take-it-or-leave-it gesture, the Senate voted Thursday night to reject more than $20 billion in domestic spending the House had tacked on to its $60 billion bill to fund President Barack Obama's troop surge in Afghanistan.
[...]
The moves repel a long-shot bid by House Democrats earlier this month to resurrect their faltering jobs agenda with $10 billion in grants to school districts to avoid teacher layoffs, $5 billion for Pell Grants to low-income college students, $1 billion for a summer jobs program and $700 million to improve security along the U.S.-Mexico border.Labor unions had strongly backed the House Democratic effort to attach money to the supplemental to boost employment and avoid teacher layoffs. Will these unions now urge House Democrats to vote no on any jobless war supplemental?
Few expect that the House, in a freestanding vote next week, would reject the $33 billion request for the Afghanistan war, since until now there has been a solid block of more than 90% of House Republicans committed to voting yes on what they would consider a "relatively clean" war supplemental.
But what is in serious dispute is how many House Democrats will vote no on a jobless war supplemental. A large Democratic no vote would send a strong signal to the White House of House Democratic impatience with a blank checkbook for endless and fruitless war while it is claimed that there is no money to save jobs at home, at a time of nearly 10% measured unemployment. A large Democratic no vote would also send a strong signal of Democratic "no confidence" in the Pentagon's war plans, increasing pressure on the Administration to vigorously pursue a political resolution to the conflict and to establish a timetable for military withdrawal - as desired by the majority of Americans and three-quarters of Democrats, according to a recent CBS poll.
Labor and the majority of House Democrats now have two solid reasons to support a no vote. First, their efforts to add money to save jobs at home have been rejected by the Senate - with White House approval. Second, there is no kind of timetable for military withdrawal embedded in the legislation - not even the July 2011 beginning of a drawdown that President Obama promised last year but which General Petraeus is now doing his best to undermine.
Sixty percent of House Democrats voted on July 1 to require President Obama to establish a timetable for withdrawal.
And increasingly, labor unions are turning explicitly against the war.
On July 11, the American Federation of Teachers, meeting at their national convention in Seattle, adopted a resolution calling for:
"an end to our current open-ended military involvement in Afghanistan, with a specific timetable for the rapid, orderly withdrawal of all armed forces and military contractors from Afghanistan, to begin immediately"United Auto Workers President Bob King and Rainbow PUSH leader Jesse Jackson have announced that a march in Detroit on Aug. 28, the 47th anniversary of King's 1963 march on Washington, will kick off a campaign to to rebuild the nation's cities, provide jobs and education, enact a moratorium on foreclosures, and end the wars in the Middle East [my emphasis.]
The Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Vermont state AFL-CIO labor federations have called for ending the war in Afghanistan; as have the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), and the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE).
If you oppose the spending of your tax dollars for more war, make your voice heard. The Friends Committee on National Legislation has established a toll-free number that connects you to the Capitol switchboard: 1-888-493-5443, which will transfer you to your Representative's office. If you use this number, it will add to FCNL's count of how many people called Congress against the war supplemental, so your call will be tallied in two places.
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15 Comments so far
Show AllLet's see... money for teachers or money for soldiers & weapons to kill the latest imaginary enemy. What would a sane government/society vote for, or see fit to finance with its limited capital?
This is not a sane government/society. On the rare occasions when I have been drawn into discussions of the Afghanistan war, I keep asking things like: "What is our mission there? What are we trying to accomplish? How would 'success' there be defined? How does our being there decrease the likelihood of further terrorist assaults on the U.S.?"
I don't get much in the way of answers to these questions. Didn't some famous philosopher say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a good outcome each time?
That is "a different outcome."
How about establishing a "timetable for inquiry"...
"Every official we questioned about the possibility of an invasion of Afghanistan said that it was almost unthinkable, absent a provocation such as 9/11." - The 9/11 Commission Report, July 2004 (page 137)
Obama stands with the Senate because they give each other cover for ineffectiveness. They both have largely abandoned the House dems (especially progressives).
If I were a progressive Dem in the House I would vote whatever way is going to give them the most political cover. Since it looks like nothing else is going to get done (thanks to the Senate), I would devote all energies to getting re-elected. And it is likely they will have to do it on their own.
The House Dems have abandoned the House Dems.
Remember how Kucinich caved on Medicare for ALL and went along with the health insurance cartel bailout after his trip with Mr. Change on Air Force One?
It's not just the WH and Seanate that is corrupt.
Well we'll just have to play their game their way. We just need a good name like;
$30bn Distruction of education fund; actually funds teachers and schools but as the fools never read these things I think we can ram it through som mid-night soon
$20bn War on Redundancy of American workers act: this will fund UI as long as nessary.. they'll never read it either.
$30bn War on Americias Children act; Funds school breckfast and lunches, also after school programs academic/and play-sports.
All you have to do is use their terms and congress will break down your doors to fund you.
>^^<
Wasn't it Mary Poppins who sang "Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down?"
Ah, it's one of the glories of the Enlightenment that our Modern Misrepresentatives operate on such an exalted, sophisticated, elegant principle.
So, we are asked to accept as foregone conclusion the wry "common-sense" truth that legislation will usually have a toxic, reprehensible, pernicious core purpose.
To the extent that it's convenient, this poison core will then be dipped, rolled, and wrapped in utterly unrelated sweetening features included expressly to make the poison pill more acceptable to demurring Misrepresentatives.
Put another way, it's understood that any individual opponents or blocs, e.g. the Congressional Anti-Poison Caucus, can't and won't actually remove or de-toxify the poison-- the question is whether these nominal "opponents" will demand compensating sweeteners.
"War" is trumps-- anything bearing the "War" brand gets Congressional approval, apart from a few fine rhetorical flourishes from the Usual Suspects. So the absence of a withdrawal timetable may provoke some expressions of Disappointment and maybe even a Stern Letter-- but it won't be a dealbreaker.
So the question then becomes whether the Elected Misrepresentatives will swallow it even if it isn't coated with the jimmies or crushed nuts of a "jobs" component.
On balance, I think they will. Oh, they love their fixins-- their jimmies, their crushed nuts, their maraschino cherries-- but they'll grudgingly swallow a naked bolus because politics is the art of compromise, and they're artists. Confidence artists, but still artists.
In commenting after another article, I found myself focussing on the hypocrisy of these mostly "christian" politicians.
Perhaps we need to aggressively put them on the spot.
Do they believe in Jesus and his teachings or do they think he was a fool or a liar?
How many Billions would Jesus spend on war?
Could they please ask their favorite minister how much war is appropriate in Jesus' eyes?
I do not believe that Jesus was a god and I do not think they do either, but I do not doubt the power of revealing hypocrisy.
Are we really getting meaningful analysis here?
The midterm elections are approaching. The public supports education and is doubtful about the war. So what do Democrats do? They put education funding into war funding.
Does this make sense as a Dem Party strategy? Wouldn't it be more effective to show up the Repugs as opposed to what people want and support, such as education?
If education funding were in a separate bill, Republicans would vote against it. However, Dems have a majority in Congress and could pass the funding over Repug objections. The Repugs would be seen as anti-public education. The Dem message (supposedly) would be reinforced positively among the public. Win-win. And Dems get big gains during the midterm elections.
Why, instead, do we get this tangled approach? Supposedly, this is all deep politics. You see, the Dems only vote for war funding to get education funding. Does anyone really believe this stuff?
May I suggest a simpler, Occam's Razor explanation? The Dems support the wars. The mixup with education funding is intentional to hide this fact. So, the question in this article about whether the Dems will now oppose the funding - now that the education funds have been stripped from the bill - is meaningless. Of course the Dems will support the war funding because the Dems support the wars.
I'd love to be wrong about this. I don't think I am. I think this sort of horse-race analysis of the Dem/Repugs in this article just confuses people from seeing the obvious: the two parties are one. They are the business party, public interest be damned.
-TIA
Your analysis is much better than the author's.
The whole process is, as you suggest, designed to deceive us into thinking we must choose the correct side, that one side is better than the other.
Well stated, TIA!
I tried to capture "this tangled approach" in a satirical metaphor of poison pills disguised, or made palatable, with sweeteners or sugar-coating. But your straightforward description is much clearer.
The moderates and Dead Centrists buy into the "tangled approach" because they mistake a dominant "reality" for, um, actual reality.
Howard Zinn touched upon this when he warned against the (growing) trend of citizens becoming captive to a sycophantic "inside politics" perspective.
Despite all of the pious aphorisms about holding politicians' cloven hooves to the fire, etc., these self-styled "pragmatists" accept a political status quo in which legislative process has been hijacked by an elite ruling class of Elected Misrepresentatives.
So, as is amply demonstrated in CD articles and comments threads, the emergent "tangled approach" process is taken for granted as flawed, perhaps, but inevitable. Consciously or unconsciously, its proponents over-identify with the politicians and see the world through a template or filter of political horse-race handicapping.
Then, the focus shifts to how leftish citizens/voters can glean the biggest crumbs while ostensibly incrementally untangling the approach in the fullness of time.
Last year, the odious Barney Frank continued his devolutionary trend of expressing his contempt and disdain for "misguided" peaceful protest, imbued with undisguised resentment that a constituency he thought he owned was coloring outside the lines instead of crouching adoringly at his knee.
"The only thing those GLBT activists are going to 'pressure' is the grass!" he characteristically quipped in response to news of a planned gay rights demonstration in DC. What a knee-slapper! What a guy! Ol' Barn sure knows how to play the Fool Killer! Woo-HOO!
Later, confronted with the comment, Frank tartly explained in his peremptory, imperious manner that first of all, the legislation was well in hand (tucked into the abominable Defense Appropriations Act), so there wasn't even any windmill to tilt against! (I paraphrase, in the spirit of Frank's own game.)
And so it goes. But equally tellingly, afterwards the moderators discussing the passage of the legislation on "Gay USA" were forced to give mild applause or credit to this accomplishment, while sourly noting that it was a shame it had to be planted-- or hidden-- in a war-funding bill.
I'm not blaming the moderators, just citing their resigned "curate's egg" response as normative-- thanking God for the small favor of a smidgen of good and bleakly accepting the Devil's "tangled process" from which such minimal good emerges.
In a dim light, and with a Dead Centrist squint, the "tangled approach" is rationalized as a necessary approach. This in turn generates the a corollary doctrine that the best thing-- indeed, the ONLY really Sensible thing-- is to work within the tangle and adapt to a political subsistence existence.
As you suggest, this is like working within a maze-- a maze built and modified by the Minotaurs, of the Minotaurs, and for the Minotaurs (and their families and friends), engineered to run citizens in circles while they're alternatively ignored or devoured by the mazemasters.
Bravo!
Chelsea
Of course you are right. Education funding and war funding should not be in the same bill. Obfuscation is the name of the gamr. ALL the evidence shows that the Democrats support the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the enrichment of corporations, especially military corporations. There is little reasonable doubt about that.
Joe
The moral, correct thing to do would be to vote NO. But this Congress is a gutless, pathetic excuse for leadership--so it will go along with the warmongers, from the WH to the Senate, and continue the genocidal policies of a morally corrupt administration that is clueless about, well, everything. Throw more money after a bankrupt war, throw more bodies into this losing imperialist venture--all for what? To benefit business and Israel?