Pork Goes to War

March 30, 2007 7:18 AM

An Op-Ed in today's New York Times criticizes the Democrats' addition of $20 billion in proposed domestic spending to the recent emergency supplemental appropriations bill. Despite their rhetoric of five months ago, leading Democrats have not, it seems, been able to curb their own desire for pork.
posted by billysumday (29 comments total)

Of course, that's $20 billion on top of the already-unnecessary $100 billion Bush (small government, fiscal conservative Republican, if you aren't aware) asked for and he isn't complaining about these additions either.
posted by DU at 7:21 AM on March 30, 2007

Most of that money is NOT for pork, and the pork part was to get support for the bill--this is the customary way of doing business in Congress, as well the GOP knows (so stop bitching), and ending the war is worth every penny. I dislike the port and believe no bill should contain anything but items applying to that bill, but so long as no major changes are going to be made in the way stuff gets done in our nation, then why zero in on the Dems when the GOP has been building bridges not only to nowhere ((
alaska pork) but bridges to a national disaster.
posted by Postroad at 7:28 AM on March 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

So you mean a politician has said one thing and done another?

I, for one, am SHOCKED.
posted by rsanheim at 7:29 AM on March 30, 2007

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that the Dems are going to spend the next two years pushing the envelope - getting as much as they can for themselves, while still saying "Look, we're not as bad as those Republicans."

I have serious doubts about their ability to do this without pissing off the majority of the electorate. It'd be nice to think that they could, you know, just GOVERN WELL, without being total fuckwits, but that's why they're politicians, I guess.
posted by god hates math at 7:31 AM on March 30, 2007

All government is scum. This is why people don't vote.
posted by fet at 7:32 AM on March 30, 2007

Well, Are people dying because of this? Unnecessary warfare against sovereign nations? Violations of long-standing treaties against torture? Gross incompetence on a grand scale?

Bah. Small potatoes.
posted by Freen at 7:32 AM on March 30, 2007

That Op-Ed is by the president of an industry supported lobbying group Citizens Against Government Waste. They are mostly famous for trying to block Massachusetts's attempt to mandate open-source software for the state. They are also working to block net-neutrality. I'm guessing that they really don't care much about the American tax payer.
posted by octothorpe at 7:33 AM on March 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

All government is scum.

Thanks for the GOP meme!

This is why people don't vote.

And this is what Republicans want. More voters == more Democrats.
posted by DU at 7:36 AM on March 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

Are you telling me to stop bitching? Or are you telling the NYTimes editorial board to stop bitching? Seems a bit personal to me. Anyway, I'm certainly disappointed, but I'm not bitching. I expect politicians will be dishonest, though I do hold them to a higher standard when they campaign on a platform of being more honest and less sleazy than the other aisle. You seem to have a double standard if you suggest that bridges to nowhere = bad; pork in a war bill = good. How about, all pork is bad? I want the Dems to be the good guys, because I agree with them on issues and because they asked to be held to a higher standard. So, I'm holding them to a higher standard. Pork shouldn't be in a war bill. It was wrong when the Republicans did it, and it's wrong now.
posted by billysumday at 7:38 AM on March 30, 2007

Sourcewatch on CAGW
posted by R. Mutt at 7:40 AM on March 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

How does international disaster and famine assistance constitute pork? Funding the peace process in Uganda? Cleaning up dioxin in Vietnam? Capitol asbestos abatement? Preparations for an influenza pandemic?

While some of the items may very well constitute egregious pork, the PDF the NY Times links to is disingenuous.
posted by kowalski at 7:42 AM on March 30, 2007 [2 favorites]

On Preview: As apparently is the whole op-ed. Thanks R. Mutt.
posted by kowalski at 7:43 AM on March 30, 2007

mmmmmm. pork. I mean the other pork. congressional pork.
posted by ewkpates at 7:49 AM on March 30, 2007

All government is scum. This is why people don't vote.

Now this is an intresting setiment. You don't know much about how the government works, or how politics works, and yet whenever anyone writes something you immediately bitch about it, without understanding why it was done.

Let me ask you a serious question: Do you want the Iraq war to continue indefinitely? because the pork in that bill larded it up so it could pass, complete with deadlines. Without the pork, the conservative democrats would have broken ranks and joined with the republicans in order to jam through a bill that would have given the president everything he wanted, with no end in sight. Is that what you would have preferred?

Just because someone has a keyboard and an internet connection doesn't mean you should take everything they write as gospel. God damn people, at least be a little credulous of what you read. There are obviously people out there trying to mislead you for their own gain.

It would have been best if the Democrats had simply not voted for the bill, but there are a bunch of conservative "blue dog democrats" who were going to vote for the war spending one way or another (i.e. with the republicans).

Now, my feeling is that bush will simply ignore the timelines and just keep the troups there illegaly, but he's threatening to veto the bill so it obviously bothers him.

If you support mandatory timelines for ending the Iraq war, but don't like the pork in this bill, then you're a moron who is simply to stupid or ill-informed to really have an opinion on the matter in the first place.
posted by delmoi at 7:50 AM on March 30, 2007

How does international disaster and famine assistance constitute pork?

That's how you conjugate the noun, which I bet you didn't know you could do.

Pork is money to your district.
Statesmanship is money to mine.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:50 AM on March 30, 2007

You seem to have a double standard if you suggest that bridges to nowhere = bad; pork in a war bill = good. How about, all pork is bad? I want the Dems to be the good guys, because I agree with them on issues and because they asked to be held to a higher standard.

How about, let's stop getting people killed before we start worrying about pork.

I've never understood this obsession with "Pork", honestly. With all the problems in this country we have to deal with, is a little government inefficiency really the first thing we need to deal with?
posted by delmoi at 7:53 AM on March 30, 2007

Why do we act like a bill passed in one house is a Big Deal? The bills passed in both houses disagree. I will only grant credit, where due, to the final version which goes to the Whitehouse.

It is a rather obvious tactic to let individual houses pass bills, take the credit, then let the important parts get rehashed in joint conference. The Senate bill does not create binding withdrawl dates for the troops in Iraq.

So those who want to hold the Democratic Party to a higher standard, please withhold judgement until the deal becomes real, and has real teeth.
posted by Goofyy at 8:00 AM on March 30, 2007

Four years into a war, why do we still need an emergency spending bill to fund the war? Isn't anyone budgeting this thing? Isn't there any planning going on as to how much this is going to cost?
posted by ryoshu at 8:04 AM on March 30, 2007

Meet the new shit, same as the old shit. Politicians make compromises, news at 11.

Though technically two links, this post is just another single-link op-ed post that we've all come to agree don't belong here.
posted by mkultra at 8:07 AM on March 30, 2007

Yeah, I remember the NYT Op-Ed written by the CAGW when Halliburton got all those no-bid contracts and that bridge-to-nowhere for Senator Stevens, etc.

What? It didn't happen?

Darn liberal media!!

Yes, there are corporate whores in the Democratic party who will try to push money to businesses in their district. We call it a defense spending bill normally. But the fact is, the GOP actually bragged about having lobbyists write legislation for them to approve. Little difference in degree there, eh?
posted by nofundy at 8:09 AM on March 30, 2007

So those who want to hold the Democratic Party to a higher standard, please withhold judgement until the deal becomes real, and has real teeth.

I'm all for standards (I guess) but let's be realistic, the ability to really do anything as long as things are being run by the two-year-old in chief is minimal. The bill is a good first step, but it's really less then I would have personally liked to see.

Anyway, bush is saying he's going to veto the bill (holding his own stupid war hostage, and, he'd like us to think, the troops as well) so we'll see what comes out of that. Should be interesting.

Either way, bitching about the pork is for idiots and war-lovers.
posted by delmoi at 8:09 AM on March 30, 2007

Most of that money is NOT for pork, and the pork part was to get support for the bill--this is the customary way of doing business in Congress

And that's the problem. Tacking on unrelated, and often unnecessary, spending items to appropriations bills to buy votes. "Bob, normally I wouldn't vote to fund the war but if I could only get a couple of million for a bomb proof llama sperm storage facility in my district I might be able to support the President's funding request." Way to stick to your guns.
posted by MikeMc at 8:34 AM on March 30, 2007

It's disgusting that the Dems would play politics over the Iraq conflict. This is one of those rare occasions where I have to say Bush is right.

1. The pork laden bill is nothing but a political exercise. He said he would veto it, yet they sent it up anyway. They can't even get together enough to at least send up an honest bill without pork

2. A time line means nothing but defeat. While the Sunni/Shia struggle has been going on for centuries, without a stable government billions of dollars in oil revenue will be left to the hands of radicals.

And there is that "Rawanda" factor. If we leave, someone else will have to come in to stop the genocide.

Time lines are simply unfeasible. Things are quite bad now, but a civil war in a failed state on top of oil reserves, without the Coalition, is just asking for a new sort of hell.
posted by Gnostic Novelist at 8:41 AM on March 30, 2007

EDIT: Rwanda
posted by Gnostic Novelist at 8:42 AM on March 30, 2007

For those of you playing the Metafilter Home Game, here's what is actually happening:

The Republicans had total control for 6 years. They achieved and held that total control by outmaneuvering the democrats at every turn. The only reason they lost power is because they screwed things up so catastrophically, not because the dems outwitted them.

So now that the democrats are in power, the right is using all their hack tactics to attack them. This op-ed is basically calling the democrats "tax-and-spend liberals", after the greatest 6-year run-up in debt and spending in US history. They are calling it pork not because the $20B actually is pork (they haven't read the bill either) but because that's how the playbook tells republicans to go after democrats. "Pork!" "Tax and spend!" ha ha.

Here's why the New York Times ran this - they want to see how the democrats react. The New York Times is framing the debate - The republicans are on record now using the same tactics they have always used. The question for the democrats is, will they allow those tactics to work? Have they evolved their counterarguments and strategy, or are they going to respond with the same trite 1989 retorts?
posted by Pastabagel at 8:44 AM on March 30, 2007

And that's the problem. Tacking on unrelated, and often unnecessary, spending items to appropriations bills to buy votes.

First of all, there is normally only one spending bill a year, so it's not like spending bills are supposed to be "related" in the first place. And why should they be?

"Bob, normally I wouldn't vote to fund the war but if I could only get a couple of million for a bomb proof llama sperm storage facility in my district I might be able to support the President's funding request."

How much of the funding is for things like that this time around? Are you saying that money to be used for fixing up Walter Reid Hospital and and provide better care is for veterens is really unrelated.

Look, how exactly would you propose ending this kind of thing to begin with? I don't even see how it could be possible under the system we have. Perhaps if we switched to a party-based parliamentary system like, Switzerland where people vote for parties and the government is divided up by party affiliation rather then geographic regions something might be done. As long as congress people are only accountable to people in their district, there is no way to get rid of it.

All you're seeing here is republicans bitching about pork because they're not getting any.
posted by delmoi at 8:49 AM on March 30, 2007

If this is pork, the last 6 years must have been the biggest goddamned hog farm ever to grace god's green earth!
posted by wierdo at 8:54 AM on March 30, 2007

Perspective.
posted by Miko at 8:55 AM on March 30, 2007

Actually, I'm a Democrat and I'm bitching about $74 million for peanut containers because it's bullshit and the Democrat leaders should put an end to it. I was mad about this long before I read the NYTimes editorial this morning, but if it works for you to discredit the source of information rather than what is being discussed, fair enough. It is, ironically enough, a typically Republican/conservative way of arguing a point.
posted by billysumday at 8:56 AM on March 30, 2007