The 2003 vote on $87 billion for the war in Iraq was probably the most talked-about vote of Bush’s first term. The fact that John Kerry and John Edwards voted against giving the White House another blank check for the war became an albatross around their respective necks — and fodder for countless Bush-Cheney speeches, ads, and direct mail pieces.
To hear the Bush machine tell it, to vote against the emergency expenditure was to tell the troops that you don’t care about their safety or security. It told the nation that you care more about politics than you taking care of Americans who are in danger and need our help.
With this in mind, I can’t wait to hear the explanation for why 11 House Republicans voted against the $52 billion emergency spending bill yesterday for Gulf Coast victims.
In case you haven’t seen the list elsewhere, the 11 Republicans were Joe Barton of Texas, Jeff Flake of Arizona, Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, Scott Garrett of New Jersey, John Hostettler of Indiana, Steve King of Iowa, C.L. “Butch” Otter of Idaho, Ron Paul of Texas, F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin, Tom Tancredo of Colorado, and Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia.
Now, I’ve seen some reports suggesting that these 11, who knew the bill would pass but voted on principle, were concerned about waste and abuse. Maybe so. But I have a follow-up question: why did so many of the Callous 11 vote for the most bloated, wasteful transportation bill in American history just a couple of months ago?
Barton, Foxx, Garrett, Hostettler, King, Tancredo, and Westmoreland, moved by principles about responsible government spending, rejected a measure to help respond to the worst national disaster in American history, but these deeply-held beliefs didn’t seem to get in the way of their vote for a $286.5-billion highway bill (that cost quintuple the Katrina bill), which included generous funding for a “bridge to nowhere,” a $1.5 million bus stop, and $200 million for a one-mile span linking Ketchikan, Alaska, with Gravina Island (population: 50 people).
Sounds like their principles are applied rather selectively.