Washington Post Goes After the Dems on Pork

Even liberal organs like The Washington Post are getting tired of the antics of the Democrats, and today they're slamming them in the editorial section for piling a bunch of pork project onto the Iraq War supplemental bill:

TODAY THE House of Representatives is due to vote on a bill that would grant $25 million to spinach farmers in California. The legislation would also appropriate $75 million for peanut storage in Georgia and $15 million to protect Louisiana rice fields from saltwater. More substantially, there is $120 million for shrimp and menhaden fishermen, $250 million for milk subsidies, $500 million for wildfire suppression and $1.3 billion to build levees in New Orleans.

Altogether the House Democratic leadership has come up with more than $20 billion in new spending, much of it wasteful subsidies to agriculture or pork barrel projects aimed at individual members of Congress. At the tail of all of this logrolling and political bribery lies this stinger: Representatives who support the bill -- for whatever reason -- will be voting to require that all U.S. combat troops leave Iraq by August 2008, regardless of what happens during the next 17 months or whether U.S. commanders believe a pullout at that moment protects or endangers U.S. national security, not to mention the thousands of American trainers and Special Forces troops who would remain behind.

The Democrats claim to have a mandate from voters to reverse the Bush administration's policy in Iraq. Yet the leadership is ready to piece together the votes necessary to force a fateful turn in the war by using tactics usually dedicated to highway bills or the Army Corps of Engineers budget. The legislation pays more heed to a handful of peanut farmers than to the 24 million Iraqis who are living through a maelstrom initiated by the United States, the outcome of which could shape the future of the Middle East for decades.

The Dem caucus is in such bad shape that the only way they could cobble together enough votes to pass the funding bill for the Iraq war was to promise a few million here, and a few million there to various House members in the hopes they could squeak out another vote or two. Consequently, the bill is loaded down like a Christmas tree with all kinds of pork projects totally unrelated to our effort to win the war. For a complete list of those projects, check out this post at Gateway Pundit. You won't believe it.

Despite throwing money around like drunken Republicans, they still may not have enough votes to pass this bill since the GOP has pretty much unified in opposition to it. Unless they can persuade some of the most militant anti-war Dems to go along with the funding, the bill will fail and San Fran Nan and her team will be dealt a serious defeat.