House passes war appropriations bill - Chimpy throws a hissy fit

no. but you've told me plenty by your immature and irrelevant remarks.

goodbye.

 

lol. the exact type of comment i expected. Im glad you finally showed your true colors. A immature punk who cant handle someone disagreeing with him. Everything pointed to this, from you weak arguments to your pathetic attemps at rhetoric, your regurgitation of other peoples arguments, play on emotions, posting others quotes blindly and inability to focus on 1 topic but jump around like a rabbit on ritalin.

Sad thing is its people like you that give the word 'liberal' a bad name. You are your own worse enemy. Its people like you that hurt this country more than help. Why? because you dont have the ability to talk to someone with differing views and try to establish some type of base on which to agree and build upon.

But thank again for letting me, and everyone else, know that when you get questioned and forced to support your views all you have is name calling and what someone else said. Congrats, you and my 5 year old nephew are on the same level.

Its peopl

Take care of yourself. Grow up soon.

 

hmmmmm. mark joined in 1999. soooo, if he joined when he was 13, he's now prolly 'bout 21 now . my guess is that he's a bit more mature than you donkey. y'know, the only thing original about you is that show you put on in tijuana. that, for sure, is magic- ouchy

 

The bold part is bull****. If it has nothing to do with funding, they would authorize funding without conditions and have a seperate bill calling for a timeline. The Dems are the ones that choose to tie funding to the timeline (not to mention barrels full of pork). If everyone is for funding, have funding bill with no strings, so the funding can get done now, then come back and work on the other stuff.

 

The funding is for the war effort, as is the timeline. They belong together as the American people are no longer willing to give Bush a blank check when it comes to this war. This bill is about accountability, Bush doesn't want any and the rest of us want some.

 

Again, it's not really. It's a toothless amendment that ensures that no one who voted for it "can be blamed" for the military staying. It has more ways out of the timeline than Rafer has missed shots. And to get that toothless amendment approved, $24 Billion in pork (mostly ag funding for reluctant Democratic congressmen's districts) was added to the bill. It should bother everyone that the Democratic leadership throws that kind of money around just so they can have finger-pointing ammunition.

 

I gotta agree these bills, especially the House one, have a lot of problems. Yes there should be accountability for the war but these bills don't seem like very good ways to do it.

 

I'm curious about congress attaching conditions to spending. I know that with highway bills it is done. (IE no federal funding for highway bills if the drinking age is 18 instead of 21.)

How do you feel about those spending bills? Do you think that those spending bills overstep congress' role as well?

I ask because your argument that the bills violates the speration of the branches is interesting. I don't feel that it does, but my opinion on it isn't set in stone, more like that is the direction I am leaning.

 

Very well said.

 

That's really an apples-to-oranges comparison. The highway funding bills (education, environment, etc.) are "ways around the Constitution". Congress basically bribes the States into making laws that the darned Constitution won't let Congress make. That's a Federalism issue. If this were a clean bill that did what it's advertised to do, that would be a Separation of Powers issue. I think Constitutionally, the debate favors Congress, but it is definitely debatable.

 

so he's been here longer hes more mature. thats some excellent reasoning

 

No, it is the Congress starting to fulfill the mandate to get us out of Iraq. That is almost entirely what the '06 election was about and the Dems should be commended for listening to the people.

Giving us the flexibility we need to change the timeline if the situation on the ground warrants it.

I agree with you about the pork, but that is not a problem with the Dems or Reps, it is a problem with the Congress in general. neither party is interested in restraining pork as it is the pork that helps solidify their reelections. Attempting to frame the pork issue as a Democrat-only issue is intellectually dishonest.

As opposed to the kind of money that the GOP threw around for worse reasons over the past 6 years?

I see $24 billion in pork as a reasonable tradeoff for haveing at least the beginnings of accountability in the Iraq debacle.

 

I readily admit that the GOP has failed miserably in fiscal responsibility over the past 10+ years. But increasing a bill's size by 24% for unrelated expenses is unprecedented.

Congress should sign a resolution committing to end funding at that date, and everyone should keep their promise. That is the way this should be handled. But Congress doesn't want the responsibility of ending funding. They want to shift the rest of the blame to the President.

 

Understandably Congress attaches conditions all the time and this isn't unusual. The difference is though is what these particular bills are about and the Constitutional issues they address. Congress attaching conditions to things like transportation or education bills doesn't raise a Constitutional problem, actually I take that back since there are some issues regarding the 10th Ammendment and the Commerce clause, since those aren't specifically addressed in the Constitution. The difference is is that the Constitution specifically states that the President is the Commander and Chief and while Congress has the power to declare and fund war how that war is tacticly fought is under the Commander and Chief. Funding conditions that seek to alter tactical decisions to me are overstepping the bounds of the separation of powers so while I think Congress has the power to end the war by stopping all funding placing conditions on funding seems to be interference.

I will also add even without the specific Constitutional issues I'm troubled by conditional funding legislation like this. This has become normal operating procedure to provide political cover on controversial issues and IMO has needlessly complicated legislation rather than taking issues head on.

 

I totally agree. Until the Dems are willing to write up a bill, sans pork preferably, that will actually end this war, they will remain accomplices to it in my eyes. They voted for the war. Now it's time for them to correct their mistake. They talk about accountability, but they refuse to own up to the part of the war that THEY are responsible for.

Defund the war now and bring our troops home.