Rep. Jim McGovern Urges Colleagues to Vote No on War Escalation Funds

Congressman
Jim McGovern (D., Mass.), the second ranking Democrat on the House
Rules Committee, urged his colleagues to vote No on the upcoming
supplemental to fund an escalation of war in Afghanistan with $33
billion.

Speaking
on a podcast produced by Progressive Democrats of America, McGovern
said, "In order to be able to fund the surge that the president
requested a few months ago, there's going to need to be an emergency
supplemental appropriations bill, and we expect that in the next couple
of months. A couple of things that we're trying to get is first a
separate vote on the Afghan war funding, versus all the other stuff in
the supplemental, so there's an up or down vote on the war funding."

Asked
whether he supported No votes on the funding for the escalation,
regardless of whether other measures were included in the bill,
McGovern said, "The bigger that No vote is, the more pressure on the
White House there will be to change our policy. You know, the bigger
that No vote is, the more pressure there's going to be on leaders here
in Congress to pressure the White House to change our policy."

National
Director of PDA, Tim Carpenter, noted: "There will also, of course, be
more pressure on every other member of Congress to join those voting
No, which could ultimately lead to a denial of funds for more war,
regardless of the president's preference."

McGovern
went on to explain his opposition to the escalation and to continuing
the war at all: "I've worried from the very beginning that the war in
Afghanistan is a war that has no end. And if you read some of the
recent reports, you know, our military, which is the finest in the
world, will win every military battle. But then when it's time for the
Afghans to take over, they go into these villages that we supposedly
have liberated from the Taliban, and then they go in and they loot all
the
homes and small businesses there, which means we have to go back and
pay these people off again, and then when we leave the Afghan army
leaves, and the Taliban goes back in. So we're going around in circles
here. So this is a war that nobody quite knows how to define what
victory is. This is a war that will go on forever. And this is a war
that will bankrupt us. So it is important to urge your member of
Congress to vote No on the supplemental. It is important to send that
signal, because if we don't, you know, we're going to be having this
conversation 10 years from now. . . . The more the pressure on the
member of Congress the more likely they're going to vote No on the
supplemental."

The full audio of this podcast is available online:
https://blog.pdamerica.org/2010/04/the-agitator-voices-of-pda-episode-6

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