Shame on You & Your Salad Bar, Nancy

I’ve been pretty quiet here recently on the political and religion fronts. There’s just too much crap in the bowl; I can’t get focused on anything in the swirling mess long enough to write about it. Needless to say, I’ve been more than willing to take shots at the Bush administration. But, with the unending struggles in Iraq and Afghanistan and the parade of debacles involving Walter Reed, Scooter Libby and the U.S. Attorneys there are just too many targets of opportunity on that side of the aisle. Where do you start; where do you stop?

Never wanting to be outdone by the other side in any endeavor, the Dims have now provided a focused target worthy of a Patriot missile attack. On Friday the Dims in the House pounded through the “U.S. Troop Readiness, Veteran’s Health and Iraq Accountability Act.” Any piece of legislation with a title like that is bound to be a target for something. In this instance, the target is as old as prostitution – the sleazy role played by money in the never-ending pay-for-play drama enacted each and every day on the banks of the Potomac.

The president asked for an additional $103 billion to fight the war on terror in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. He got it, with an additional $21 billion tossed in for good measure, Congress being the generous gang they are. The president got a lot more than money, however. He got a series of deadlines for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq; strict standards for training, equipping and resting our troops before they’re sent into combat; and a set of binding benchmarks for actions that must be taken by the Iraqi government. Those measures produced a vote that adhered closely to party lines. The Dims, for the most part, support those measures; the Rebs, for the most part, oppose them.

Those measures are not the target for my missile attack because I support most of them. My disgust is about the money, and I don’t mean the money for the war. I mean the money for the Denny’s salad.

It seems the Dims were having trouble lining up the votes they needed, so they resorted to a tried and true practice in American politics – they bought them. The $124 billion appropriated in a bill that was ostensibly about troop readiness, veteran’s health, and Iraq accountability included some decidedly non-war-related ingredients. Here’s the lineup, which prompted Representative Mike Pence, R-Ind. to say, “That’s not a war funding bill, that’s the salad bar at Denny’s.”

- Spinach growers got $25 million because the E. coli scare hurt their sales
- The shrimp industry got $120 million because Katrina hurt their sales
- Federal support for peanut storage got a $74 million extension
- Shellfish producers got $5 million to fight a clam virus
- In the non-salad column, the U.S. Capitol power plant got $50 million for asbestos cleanup

Each of those appropriations secured one or more votes for funding the war on terrorism and taking a Congressional stance on life and death issues like troop readiness, veteran’s health, and Iraq accountability. What a principles-centered lot our Congress is. It’s nice to see their values-based approach to government – meaning they value whatever puts money in the pockets of the people who vote for them.

I place the blame for this particular piece of political bribery not just on the representatives who demanded and received the payoff but on the House leadership for allowing it to happen. Nancy Pelosi and her lieutenants wanted an anti-Bush bill so badly that they forgot that this vote was about something immeasurably more important than poking the president in the eye with a partisan stick. They forgot that this vote was actually about the lives and well being of hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops and veterans and Iraqi citizens. How in God’s name did they permit anyone to bring spinach, shrimp and peanuts into that equation!

The Dim leadership should have told their caucus, “This is the vote that on November 7th the American people sent you here to cast. So, however your conscience guides you cast that vote one way or the other on that basis and that basis alone. We’ll talk about your need for salad bar ingredients tomorrow.” Just as the Dims demand accountability in the West Wing and the Iraqi government, for good reason, they must demand accountability in their own ranks.

Because the president will veto any bill that contains any form of restraint on his presumed power to wage war in whatever manner and for however long he prefers, this slab of slimy pork isn’t likely to get delivered to the congressional districts that apparently need to ride on the backs of U.S. troops and veterans in order to get federal support for their lagging business interests. Our troops are carrying enough; they don’t need to haul any Georgia peanuts to storage.

The Rebs shamed themselves in the Abramoff and lobbying scandals, for which they were justifiably scorned by the Dims. Now, just weeks into their reclaimed majority status, the Dims are bringing shame on themselves with equally justified scorn being poured out by the Rebs. It’s just a matter of time before this ball of shame gets hit back into the far court, and then back again into the near court. If only this were tennis instead of determining the future of the nation that stands as the alleged leader of the free world.

The allocation of money and the votes and political power it brings are the root of essentially all governmental evil. Right now, two elements of the axis of evil are headquartered in Washington, DC in the guise of our two political parties. We need to watch both of them about as carefully and as often as we do the other members of the axis of evil headquartered in Tehran and Pyongyang.