The Political Universe  

Earlier today, President Bush requested an additional $46 billion dollars in supplementary spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “The majority of the supplemental funding is for day-to-day -- is for day-to-day military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The bill provides for basic needs like bullets and body armor, protection against IEDs, and Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles. It also funds training missions, vital embassy programs, improvements in Iraq and Iraqi security forces, and intelligence operations that protect our troops. These are urgent military necessities, and the supplemental was prepared in close consultation with our commanders on the ground. This funding is what General Petraeus and other military leaders say we need -- and Congress ought to give it to them,” Bush said.

However Democratic Congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are having an absolute field day with the idea that Bush won’t fund more health care for poor children, but he will spends a couple of hundred billion dollars per year on war. "For the cost of less than 40 days in Iraq, we could provide health care coverage to 10 million children for an entire year,” Pelosi said. Harry Reid said in statement, “President Bush wants us to rubber stamp another $200 billion in war funds – all borrowed money, none of it paid for – for next year alone.  But when we sent a bipartisan CHIP bill to his desk to provide health insurance for the children of working families, the President called it too expensive.  Let’s remember, every dime of the money for CHIP was paid for.”

Pelosi once again called for an end to the war. “The choice is between a Democratic plan for responsible redeployment of our troops and the President’s plan to spend another trillion dollars for a 10-year war in Iraq.  We must end this war.” Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards suggested that if the Democrats in Congress really wanted to end the war, then they should cut off funding.

"Enough is enough. The American people voted for change last November and now, almost a year later we still have the status quo. Once and for all Congress must stand up to President Bush and pass a funding bill with a timetable for withdrawal. If the president vetoes that bill, Congress must send it back, again and again, as many times as it takes for the president to finally get the message that he can't defy the American people,” Edwards said.

I think Edwards is right. Congress has been completely gutless on the war. Pelosi and Reid continue to talk a good game, but at the end of the day, they always continue to fund the war. They could easily ignore Bush’s request, and not act on it, or reject it outright. The problem is that most Democrats, Clinton and Obama included, are afraid of being labeled unpatriotic, so they continue to campaign against this war while still funding it. The Democratic Party has completely let down the American people on the issue of Iraq.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/10/20071022-8.html

http://speaker.gov/newsroom/pressreleases?id=0371

www.johnedwards.com/news/headlines/20071022-timeline-for-withdrawal/>

http://democrats.senate.gov/newsroom/record.cfm?id=285781&>