White House blames the wrong party for war funding problems
At this morning’s White House press gaggle, press secretary Dana Perino, before the questions even began, took a shot at Congress over Iraq war funding.
“Congress, as you know, is away for its two-week break. They did not approve funding for our troops. Deputy Secretary Gordon England has said that these delays will result in a profoundly negative impact on the defense civilian workforce, depot maintenance, base operations, and training activities. Delays in funding mean that the Army and Marine Corps are immediately forced to begin shifting funds between accounts in order to keep operations running. And the Pentagon will soon be forced to send furlough notices for as many as 100,000 Army and Marine Corps civilian employees at bases around the country.
“We are calling on Congress and the Democrats in Congress to send the President supplemental war funding without arbitrary surrender dates and without micromanaging the war before they leave for their next vacation, which is going to be around the Christmas holidays. They only have about six legislative working days left, so they have a lot of work to do when they get back into town.”
Asked about the billions already allocated to the Pentagon in the current budget, Perino responded, “The Defense Department says that they need this funding in order to keep the war running.” She added that lawmakers, by not passing the supplemental funding package, are “pull[ing] the rug out from under” the troops.
As for the “furlough notices for as many as 100,000 Army and Marine Corps civilian employees at bases around the country,” Perino added that the process could begin very soon — and it’ll be all because of congressional Dems failing to “approve funding for our troops.”
Regrettably, Perino doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Again.
First, the House did approve funding for our troops, and passed the spending bill fairly easily. The same legislation enjoyed majority support in the Senate, but Republicans refused to allow a vote, because the funding included a phased-withdrawal measure supported by a majority of Americans and lawmakers. If the president wants the funding bill to pass, he should urge Republicans to stop blocking it.
Second, as some leading House Dems explained this morning, the Pentagon is not out of money, and these furlough notices are a cheap stunt.
At a press conference this morning, Reps. John Murtha (D-PA) and David Obey (D-WI) rebutted the administration’s scare-mongering by noting that just last week, Bush signed a $471 billion defense spending bill. That bill “contains enough money to continue military operations through mid-February, because of a provision that lets the administration shift money to the war from other Pentagon accounts.”
Murtha ripped the Pentagon’s “Rumsfeld-like” tactics aimed at “scaring the families of the troops” just ahead of the Christmas season:
“I thought we’d gotten rid of Secretary Rumsfeld, but this really worries me that there would be such a political document…. This is a political document. They’re scaring people. They’re scaring the families of the troops with this document. That’s the thing that’s so despicable about what they’re doing.
The “political document” Murtha references is a memo distributed by the Army Budget Office, warning that the Army may no longer be able to function unless Congress quickly passes the pending spending bill.
Just when it seems these guys can’t get any more shameless, they manage to turn things up a notch.
Sounds like the military has just put more political stripes on their sleeves.
First let’s furlough Blackwater, then Haliburton and KBR.
Gates is little better than Rummy, but without the haiku-like quotability. (sigh)
Well, then Bush should order an end to the war and the troops home before the December holidays begin. Best Bush reasons for a pullout I’ve seen to date.
I hope congress realizes the public isn’t buying this crap from the WH. The buck stops here. “surrender dates”? What a crock to frame troop withdrawal and redeployment as “surrender dates”. The only surrender here is Bush surrendering to the obvious that the American Public wants the funding to stop now and that we refuse to buy his lies any longer.
Bringing the soldiers home for Christmas is the best present the families could ask for. Keep you damn money…keep your guns…we want our men and women home.
Why does the average person have to sift thru the rhetoric and political master manipulation to know what’s going on. The Press should be doing their job of
getting it to the people – that is the truth, not the money backed side of the truth
but the truth. It can’t be that hard if you have a conscious. We the people,
we want the truth and right now the truth is Americans want a plan to phase out of a civil war that is not interested in democracy. If the people of Iraq, or any other nation in the world want democracy and want our help implementing it I believe there would be support for that assistance. Creating a war, instilling ourselves where we are NOT wanted is only furthering the negative impact the United States continues to have on the World. Let it go, we continue to not learn from past mistakes. Democracy is great- get it, the majority. The majority wants our govenment to pay attention to our needs in our country, to solidify what is good about our Nation, we’re too broken to help fix anyone else. I’m sick of it. And I’m nobody but my life has deteriorated since the war began especially financially and yes of course 911 has devastated me and I have been personnally affected by a death from that tragedy, but we the people………. pay attention to me, to us.
I’m surprised that Perino didn’t say that they can temporarily fund the DoD with all those refunds they’re getting from injured service members.
I mean, with Bush’s new-found fiscal responsibility and all …
Dana Perino – all that outer beauty and all that inner shit.
bjobotts,
rest assured, at the moment, Congress realizes this is a crock.
Also, rest assured, they’ll pu$$y out, as they always do. They think that it’s politically better for them to keep Bush looking like a sociopathic tyrant they can’t control then for them to develop a backbone, take a stand, and then through sheer dumb luck have that be the time something tragic happens – another terrorist attack, an obscene casualty rate due to a bombing in Iraq, a well-timed message from OBL – that will allow the Bushies to say “Ya see? YA SEE? It’s because the Democrats cut off funding! They’re to blame! J’accuse!”
OK, the Repubs will never say “J’accuse” because that’ll make ’em sound all frutity-frenchy, but you get the gist. Dems get blamed by the GOP for everything anyway. Even when they were the minority party, they’d get blamed. Imagine if, whilst in the majority, they cut off funding and then Baghdad got his with chemical weapons we all thought Saddamn didn’t have because they were never found, as well as photos of Hussein and bin Laden playing Dance Dance Revolution together while the plans for 9/11 are clearly seen on the desk in the background (not to mention an autographed picture of Jack Murtha: “Saddam, keep on rockin’ in the “free” world! HAHA! Love, Jack.”)
Nah, better for the Dems to roll over again. Being blamed for everything is inevitable, might as well give the GOP and the media as little ammo as possible, right?
Right?
Maybe the bumper ticker will finally come true and the military will have to start holding bake sales to keep funding their astronomically expensive weapons systems to fight the kind of wars we won’t be fighting. Maybe then they’ll realize how bloated and wasteful their budget is when they’ll have to bake and sell a billion brownies to pay for one of the new planes to fight an old, cold war. Thank your boss for nixing the funding Dana. Think of it as an inadverntant, self-imposed intervention.
If they really DID have to furlough all those civilian employees, the jobs would be performed anyway—by the troops that “El Bushwhacko” would have to pull from the oh-so-important mission of further annointing the altar of Mr. Bush’s war with more blood….
Well, what did anyone expect them to do, meekly agree to demands, then maybe have a group hug? I sure hope Democrats in Congress are prepared to do a more effective job of waging the PR war over this than they usually do. This stuff doesn’t sell itself, you know.
“Nice army you have here. Shame if something were to happen to it.”
I wish the Democrats would stop responding to crap like this with expressions of shame and reams of paper documenting the “falsehoods”.
Just call Bush and company on what they are doing: Blackmail.
They are holding the troops hostage in order to get what they want.
And what are 100 thousand civilian contractors doing in Iraq in the first place? By all means, furlough them. Let them go home. And start bringing the military home too. In time for Christmas, by preference.
Dems need to get out from behins the GOP-goons and go on the attack. Make the fox-fools defend their spin. Make Bush defend his lies. Make Perino defend her boss’s insanity—over and over, endlessly.
Ram the bastages back, shove them into a totally-defensive mode, and attack from all sides.
You’ve heard of “killer bees?” What this country needs right now are “Killer D’s.” Don’t stop to address the right’s talking points. Don’t recognize the MSM lemmings who won’t do their jobs any more because they’d all rather feed from the Bu$hCo trough. Take this thing, and ramp it up to von Klauswitz’ concept of “total war.”
And watch the GOP-goons fold and run with their yellow-dog tails tucked between their legs—just like any other bully….
Just wait for Congress to cave in….I am getting so fed up with them caving in to whatever the WH wants. We shouldn’t be having supplemental or emergency funding bills every time we turn around. Put it in the budget and stick to it or bring them home. You know that if Clinton was in the WH that is what they would be ranting!
Ah Misha, I was just about to say I also hope people understand this is their opening position. They’re almost certainly going to have to settle for something less. I hope they drive a hard bargain though. As I’ve said before, I’d be pretty happy if they could succeed in moving the supplemental funding appropriations for Iraq on a 3-month cycle instead of six months or a year. That would be a huge first step. But I may even be thinking a little too small at this point. It’s entirely possible that they could get more.
The landscape has changed significantly in the last 6 to 9 months, I think, partially because earlier failed efforts attempts have actually gotten the public’s attention and have resulted in a lot more thinking of this in more real terms as something that’s actually possible. That’s why I always thought is was worth going through the motions even though everyone knew they could pull it off yet. And anyway, god knows the Democrats needed the practice.
“furlough notices for as many as 100,000 Army and Marine Corps civilian employees at bases around the country,’ Perino added that the process could begin very soon — and it’ll be all because of congressional Dems failing to ‘approve funding for our troops.'”
Wow, taking tips from the terrorists. “Meet our demands, or we start throwing out bodies!”
Osama must be so proud…..
Bring the troops home and then there is no war and no need for money to support the war. Cut the funds for mercenaries. Stop bombing Irag and Afghanistan from aircraft. Have Cheney and Bush use their own ill got gains to fund this war and stop wasting America’s money.
For every item that is “vetoed ” by Bush deduct that amount from the defense budget.