- Jan 20, 2001
- 10,737
- 0
- 0
Yahoo
On a side note who the hell is the Bush-hating base . . . House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican, countered that questions on Iraq have been "incredibly overblown." He said Democrats "know that they have to attack Operation Iraqi Freedom to energize their Bush-hating base."
Sen. Mark Dayton (news, bio, voting record), a Minnesota Democrat, said the deficit grew from "the most colossal financial mismanagement that's ever been written in this country's history," and called for "a clear, direct and reliable accounting" of the war's costs.
The Senate was debating a $369 billion bill to fund the Pentagon (news - web sites) for the next fiscal year that ignores the $5 billion monthly costs of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan (news - web sites).
Republicans said those costs will be dealt with in separate emergency spending bills, including the $60 billion measure Congress passed in April.
Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, said it was "sort of legislative Never Never Land" to debate "the single largest defense appropriations bill in history" that does not reflect costs of Iraq, Afghanistan and the overall war on terrorism.
On a side note who the hell is the Bush-hating base . . . House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican, countered that questions on Iraq have been "incredibly overblown." He said Democrats "know that they have to attack Operation Iraqi Freedom to energize their Bush-hating base."
The Rapture is surely upon us when Ted "Spend Every Dime in the Treasury" Kennedy is the voice of fiscal responsibility in the Senate.Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican, said he pressed for the war costs to be dealt with in separate emergency bills to leave more room under the tight budget limits the Republican-led Congress imposed.
Emergency spending does not count against that budget limit, although it does increase the deficit. It has been the usual method of financing major military actions.
Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), a Massachusetts Democrat, in a speech to The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said the military operations "are creating an unsustainable financial burden at a time of exploding budget deficits."