[Peace-discuss] Democrats arrange huge amount to expand war

[C. G. Estabrook]

["Following the lead of Congressman Jim McGovern, many peace organizations 
declined during the past half year to put their full energies behind demanding 
No votes on war funding."  The Democrats continue to co-opt the opposition to 
the war. --CGE]

	Democrats Forced to Cheat to Fund War
	By David Swanson

The Democratic leadership in the House had to resort to an unusual and 
underhanded tactic to pass war funding Thursday night.

Congress has long tended to pass unrelated measures in combination with war 
bills, and usually some of these measures, such as funding schools, jobs, 
veterans care, or disaster relief, provide excuses for some "anti-war" Democrats 
to vote for the war funding. But including good things with war bills can lead 
the Republicans to vote No. When they all do that, as they did last June, no 
more than about 40 Democrats can vote No or the bill fails. Last June, the 
leadership and the White House were able to threaten and bribe enough Democrats 
to vote yes on a bill that funded both war and an IMF banker bailout. Only 32 
Democrats voted No. On Thursday the House leadership couldn't do that because 
over 40 Democrats refused to be bought off. In fact, at least 51, and reportedly 
80 to 90 had committed to voting No.

In theory, this should have resulted in separating the pig of war funding from 
the lipstick of domestic spending. Both would then, in theory, have easily 
passed the House as separate bills, with the domestic spending facing an 
uncertain fate in the Senate as long as the leadership over there keeps the 
filibuster rule in place. It would also have forced the Democratic leadership to 
pass the war funding with more Republican votes than Democratic.

THE SELF-EXECUTING RULE

But that's not what happened. Instead the Democratic Leadership produced 
something called a self-executing rule. Typically, the House will vote on a rule 
for how a bill will be voted on, vote on amendments if the rule permits any, and 
then vote on the bill. In this self-executing rule, the bill was to be 
considered passed if at least one amendment to it was approved. Otherwise it was 
to be considered dead. Either way, there would be no vote on the bill. There 
was, however, a vote on the rule. But here's the catch: it isn't considered 
polite and appropriate to vote against a rule, and Americans are not expected to 
notice how anyone votes on a rule. It's not a bill, but a procedural matter -- 
never mind if the procedure is to pass war funding without another vote.

So, we watched Republicans like Ron Paul speak against the war and the rule, 
other Republicans speak in support of the war and against the rule, and 
Democrats speak against the war and in support of the rule that would fund it. 
We saw Democrats, like Congresswoman Maxine Waters, speak in support of the rule 
that would fund the war on the grounds that she would then get a chance to vote 
for an amendment to defund the war. Think about that. Rather than blocking war 
funding, you support it in order to vote for a doomed amendment which if passed 
would have to be approved by the Senate and the President too. Not a single 
Democrat -- even those who would vote against the rule -- spoke against it.

In the end 38 Democrats, including very few progressives, voted No on the rule, 
which passed 215 to 210. That's suspiciously close, and suggests that the 
leadership permitted those votes but no more.

ESCALATING WAR, CUTTING SOCIAL SECURITY

According to Congressman John Tierney, we now have 88,000 troops and 110,000 
contractors in Afghanistan. The $33.5 billion in war funding is to send 30,000 
more troops, plus more contractors, to Afghanistan (some of whom are already 
there pre-funding). This was the vote to fund the escalation that was debated in 
the U.S. media a half year ago. That passage of time allowed this vote to come 
in the context of a debate in which almost no one mentioned the word 
"escalation", no one at all objected to the President having gone ahead with an 
unfunded escalation, and -- on the contrary -- various congress members from 
both parties swore they had to "support the troops" and others, such as 
Republican Congressmen Buck McKeon and Jerry Lewis, asserted their 
responsibility to obey "our Commander in Chief" as if the first branch of our 
government is now a branch of the military.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi slipped a surprising measure into a budget that was passed 
as part of the rule, a measure requiring that the House vote on any proposals -- 
whatever they may be -- that are proposed by the president's deficit commission, 
if those proposals are passed by the Senate. As Jane Hamsher immediately pointed 
out:

     "The commission, co-chaired by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, is packed 
with members who favor the raising the retirement age to 70, means testing, and 
private accounts. Many also support investing 20% of the Social Security trust 
fund in the stock market. It's ironic that yesterday Pelosi sent out press 
releases criticizing John Boehner for expressing the very same positions on 
cutting Social Security benefits that Jim Clyburn, Joe Biden, and Steny Hoyer 
have. She's putting this language into the rule in order to deflect 
responsibility from herself when it comes to the floor for a vote during a lame 
duck session, since without her approval that could never happen."


AMENDMENTS: 162 WANT SOME ROLE FOR CONGRESS

Following the lead of Congressman Jim McGovern, many peace organizations 
declined during the past half year to put their full energies behind demanding 
No votes on war funding. Instead, many stressed the introduction of anti-war 
amendments, arguing that we could get more votes that way. Moving three more 
congress members to vote against the rule would have sent the strongest message 
possible, but once that failed, there were four amendments to vote on Thursday 
night, three of them related to the war. The leadership had a way to handle 
these as well: take them up late at night, past filing deadlines for newspaper 
stories.

One was an amendment to eliminate military funding from the bill. This failed 25 
to 376 with 22 voting "present."

Another was to limit military funding to withdrawal. This failed by acclamation, 
and Congressman Anthony Weiner, chairing the proceedings, moved on to the next 
amendment before anyone requested a count of the vote. So we don't even now what 
the number of Yes votes was here.

The third amendment, McGovern's, was to require the president to present 
Congress with 1) a new National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan by January 
31, 2011 and 2) a plan by April 4, 2011, on "the safe, orderly and expeditious 
redeployment of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, including a timeframe for the 
completion of the redeployment." In addition -- and this was a late addition to 
the amendment strengthening it considerably -- Congress would be required to 
vote by July 2011 "if it wants to allow the obligation and expenditure of funds 
for Afghanistan in a manner that is not consistent with the president's 
announced policy of December 2009 to begin to drawdown troops by July 2011." 
This amendment failed by a vote of 162 to 260.

The 162 included a handful of Republicans and represented a significant number 
of congress members willing to at least go on record as somewhat favoring 
minimal involvement for Congress in one of its chief areas of responsibility: 
war. I say "somewhat" because we don't know how many of the 162 would still have 
voted Yes if pressured by the leadership not to.

The non-war-related amendment, to fund teachers and disaster relief, passed 239 
to 181 with 1 voting "present." This vote, heavily promoted by teachers' unions 
-- which tended never to mention the war funding -- guaranteed passage of the 
war funding, since the rule required that at least one amendment pass.

THE SENATE AND THE PRESIDENT

The Senate is out of session for the anti-imperial imperial holiday of July 4th. 
It will have to deal with the House bill, which differs from the Senate version.

The President on Thursday threatened to veto the bill because of an item in one 
of the two non-war-related amendments. Congress is careful to pay for non-war 
items with cuts elsewhere, while funding wars on a Chinese credit card. In order 
to pay for funds to save some teachers from layoffs at US schools, the amendment 
took away a small fraction of a slush fund used by the Secretary of Education to 
encourage corporatist approaches to education. Let's hope that, if the Senate 
doesn't strip out the offending provision for him, our president follows through 
and blocks an escalation of a war.


-- 

David Swanson is the author of the new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial 
Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press.  You can 
order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book.

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