Pat Roberts and Sam Brownback want to cut funding…
Senators Pat “Memory Pills” Roberts and Sam “More conservative that McCain, fewer wives than Giuliani” has come out against a bill funding base realignment and closures (BRAC) funding for two Kansas forts. They want those funds removed from a spending bill, despite the fact that Kris Kobach and the Kansas Republican Party have said that a vote against those funds would “severely damage the ability for Ft. Riley and other military installations across the country to complete the BRAC process.” Those complaints were aimed at Congresswoman Boyda when she voted for a broad spending package that didn’t include those BRAC funds. At the time, she promised the funds would be added to later spending bills.
Last year, the Republican Congress failed to carry out its major Constitutional obligation, passage of bills appropriating funds for federal programs. These bills must pass every year, and Republican leaders, more preoccupied with staying out of jail than with the people’s business, let it slip.
The new Congress acted fast. To avoid the horsetrading and delay involved in writing new appropriations bills, they passed a “continuing resolution,” which allocates funds according to the previous years bills, simply continuing the decisions made before. That decision left out money promised for BRAC programs at Fort Riley and Fort Leavenworth, funding needed for new barracks to house the Big Red One and a new prison. The Kansas GOP attacked Congresswoman Boyda for helping pass that continuing resolution, claiming that a vote for it was a vote “to cut funding from Fort Riley.”
Now, as Congress prepares to appropriate those funds in the Iraq supplemental, Roberts and Brownback are complaining. They are worried, they say, that the President might veto the bill, which contains provisions requiring that troops deployed to Iraq be adequately trained, rested, and equipped with body armor.
Todd Tiahrt voted against those provisions in committee, preferring loyalty to a failed presidency over the safety of American troops. Now Roberts and Brownback propose to do the same thing. Rather than fight the President and demand that he not veto the bill, they prefer to preemptively defend his decision to endanger soldiers’ lives, and are prepared to sacrifice readiness at Kansas forts to do so.
It’s like this classic scene from “Brownback Mountain”:
I wish I could quit you.
3 COMMENTS
Josh Rosenau,
When you want to write an article please do your own investigative reporting rather than getting your information from the drive by media.
Let me ask you this, would you have voted for this bill and be in support of this bill when the below where added by the Democrats.
4.3B — Federal Emergency Management Agency
3B — Crop disastor Assistance
1.3B — Corps of Engineers
969M — Avian Flu
750M — State Children Health Insurance Program
400M — Secure Rural Schools Act
400M — Low-income home energy assistance
120M — Shrimp
100M — Hurricane Citrus Program
80M — HUD Indian Housing
74M — Peanut Storage Subsides
60.4M — National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration]
50M — Vaccine Compensation
50M — Capitol Power Plant
35M — NASA
25M — Spinach
20M — Frozen Farmland
5M — Aquaculture Operations
4M — Federal Drug Administration Office of Women’s Health
Now, Sir, if you can tell me and your readers the importance of the 20 listed above having anything to do with the Defense Supplemental Bill please advise us.
The Democrats know that this bill has no chance of becoming law. The Senate will not pass one like it, and the President will veto any timelines that come to his desk.
So their sole significant achievement with this legislation is to embolden our enemies, and demonstrate once again that Democrats are soft on terror — and defeatist, to boot.
Congratulations. If we lose Iraq, we know squarely where to place the blame.
Thank God for people like Rep. Tiahrt, Sen. Roberts and Sen. Brownback for doing the right thing.
Elsha Noble
Derby, KS
Ms. Noble seems to have looked at very few spending bills if she thinks the list she mentions is that unusual. Whether or not spending has any relation to the title of a bill seems more often than not a crap shoot.
Ms. Noble, I fail to see how providing body armor or ensuring that our troops are rested and trained for combat would embolden anyone but our own armed forces. I encourage you to investigate that question on your own, and ask what it really means to support our troops. Are we supporting them by deploying them without adequate training and equipment? I think not.
The additional funds you are referring to are things which didn’t get into the continuing resolution I described above, but which are necessary to maintain ongoing programs. I am disappointed that Tiahrt, Moran, Brownback and Roberts all objected to additional crop disaster relief after Kansas farmers and ranchers have been so vocal in insisting that it is needed urgently, as are the other programs. The question to ask is not whether they are defense-related, but whether they are good policy. They are.
For example, the peanut program which has attracted so much mockery was first approved in May, 2006, and extends a program passed as part of the 2002 Farm Bill. It is not new spending, it is an extension of an existing and successful program approved by a Republican Congress. Tiahrt voted for the amendment in committee in 2006.