Voting 149 to 141, the US House of Representatives defeated a bill providing US$169B in funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the coming year.
Bush will get the money in the end, but seeing war funding becoming a political football is a healthy development. The Democrats have typically just rolled over and signed the cheques. It will be interesting to see what happens when the war funding is debated again, closer to the elections later this year.
Three interesting items in this story:
The total funding for Iraq and Afghan wars will be US$800 billion after this bill finally passes.
The Democrat-proposed 0.5% tax on people earning over US$500,000 to fund tertiary education for veterans is opposed by the "support the troops" Republicans as being "bad for small business". In Kiwi terms, any person or business that earns more than $500,000 wouldn't be a "small" one.
The 132 Republicans who voted "present", rather than "Yes" or "No". A tactical ploy? Or an attempt to distance themselves from the war as elections approach? You can almost hear them in September / October: "I did not vote slavishly for every war appropriation!" No. They may have tactically abstained to prevent the majority Democrats in the House from attaching conditions to Bush's war money.
Rotten to the core
46 minutes ago
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