Part of the art of blogging is finding things that people want to read about and better yet, talk about. So I often check other blogs for what is news in the blogsphere. Tonight I found a post by Weicker Liker on Connecticut Local Politics (CLP) which linked back to MyLeftNutmeg (MLN). And the comments following that post were less than happy over the post appearing on MyLeftNutmeg, which is an interesting reaction to what seemed to me a fairly interesting post. Roiling debates with people that have differing views is a good thing, but at MLN, it’s batten down the hatches time, and attack the dissenter. For me at least, I prefer the dissent and debate, it’s what makes watching the British Parliament way more interesting than watching C-Span. But I digress … the post for your review:

I noticed that Congressman Joe Courtney has pledged his unconditional support for the proposed $124.1 Billion Supplemental Spending Bill for operations in Iraq & Afghanistan

Through a written statement on Thursday, Courtney trumpeted his endorsement of the spending plan, describing it as one that “honors our troops” and serves as “a balanced compromise.”

To be fair, Courtney gets it right in standing behind our armed forces, giving the resources they need to be effective in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Its also admirable for him to have demonstrated his deep compassion for our injured soliders whose health care system has recently come under fire.

What’s disappointing, however, is Courtney’s blind support for a proposal that contains billions of dollars of our tax dollars for items unrelated to helping our troops. Its also terrible that he chose to support a deadline for withdrawl of our forces. That just gives the enemy a signal to lie low.

This “emergency” spending proposal represents everything that Democrats promised they would not be when they passed their “100 Hour Agenda”

Courtney promised us that he would be a different kind of public servant. He unfortunately appears he is falling in line with the misguided priorities of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The Democratic Caucus seems so bitterly divided over the Iraq War, they need to resort to putting “pork” in spending bills to hold their fractured caucus together.

Unfortunately, supplemental appropriations bills are exempt from spending caps and other budget controls, which makes them magnets for projects and programs that might not stand up to the scrutiny of the budget process.

Below is a list of spending and policy provisions in the supplemental that Courtney did not list in his press release and are unrelated to military operations.

*$500 million for emergency wildfires suppression; the Forest Service currently has $831 million for this purpose;

*$400 million for rural schools;

*$283 million for the Milk Income Loss Contract program;

*$120 million to compensate for the effects of Hurricane Katrina on the shrimp and menhaden fishing industries;

*$100 million for citrus assistance (2005 Homeland Livestock Indemnity Program) ;

*$74 million for peanut storage costs;

*$60.4 million for salmon fisheries in the Klamath River region in California and Oregon;

*$50 million for asbestos mitigation at the U.S. Capitol Plant;

*$48 million in salaries and expenses for the Farm Service Agency;

*$35 million for NASA risk mitigation projects in Gulf Coast;

*$25 million for Calfornia spinach growers;

*$25 million for livestock (2005 Hurricane Livestock Indemnity Program);

*$20 million for Emergency Conservation Program for farmland damaged by freezing temperatures;

*$16 million for security upgrades to House of Representatives office buildings;

*$10 million for the International Boundary and Water Commission for the Rio Grande Flood Control System Rehabilitation project;

*$6.4 million for House of Representative’s Salaries and Expenses Account for business continuity and disaster recovery expenses;

*$5 million for losses suffered by aquaculture businesses including breeding, rearing, or transporting live fish as a result of viral hemorrhagic septicemia;

*$4 million for the Office of Women’s Health at the Food and Drug Administration; and

*A minimum wage increase, which is the subject of separate legislation. (source: Weicker Liker )

Okay, Weicker Liker blames Courtney for the long list of earmarks. Probably not the issue here, since the problem is that these long lists of earmarks get tacked on the bills all the time. That’s why I’ve posted on the Read The Bills Act previously.

The New York Times wrote about this practice last fall, and noted:

Lawmakers nonetheless found room in the bill to pay for thousands of requests never sought by the Defense Department. These projects, or earmarks, included $2.1 billion for 10 additional C-17 Globemaster III cargo jets, which the Pentagon is trying to discontinue. They are made by Boeing in the home state of Senator Jim Talent, Republican of Missouri, who is locked in a tight race for re-election.

Lawmakers say earmarks can result in contributions to national security as well as to their districts’ economies. The Defense Department complains that such projects divert billions of dollars from programs the Pentagon considers vital. But both sides agree that earmarks’ merits are hard for Congress and the public to assess.

The number of earmarks has tripled over the last 12 years, straining the ability of Congressional staff members to vet each one. The opaque language of spending bills makes it hard for outsiders to know where the money for each project goes. And it is often impossible to know which lawmaker requested a specific project.

The total cost of earmarks is subject to debate. The House Appropriations Committee said the value of the “member projects” in the spending bill this time was $6.7 billion, down from $7.7 billion in the bill approved last year. The Congressional Research Service estimated the total cost of earmarks in last year’s bill at more than $9 billion. Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan group, has identified well over 2,000 earmarks in this year’s bill, roughly on par with last year’s. (source: New York Times)

And then of course the November elections swept in Democratic control of congress. So why still the earmarks abundance? Jonathan Stein at Mother Jones has a possible answer:

Democrats Will End War in Iraq with… Pork?

With John Murtha’s plan to slowly end the war in Iraq mired in controversy and unable to get broad support, and the Democratic leadership’s plan to rewrite the 2002 authorization for war going nowhere, the Democrats have turned to a different tactic.

Loading a war spending bill with pork.

Seriously, that’s the best the Dems, who control both houses of Congress, can do. From today’s Washington Post:

While Democrats try to restrict how President Bush can spend the $100 billion he wants for Iraq, they also hope to load his measure up with $10 billion in add-ons…

Lawmakers from the Great Plains are pressing for about $4 billion in disaster aid for farmers suffering under drought conditions.

The California delegation is demanding help for citrus, avocado and other Central Valley farmers facing $1.2 billion in losses from a devastating January freeze.

And so on and so on. Mind you, the idea here isn’t to pump the bill so full of special interest spending that Bush has to veto it. No, the idea is to take advantage of the fact that Bush and Congressional Republicans would never have the cojones to stop a war spending bill, and thus push through a lot of favorite projects.

What? Seriously, what? Talk about having a tin ear. Didn’t the Democrats ride into Congress promising to end the march of bills swollen on earmarks and Republican pork barrel projects? Are they seriously proposing this right now?

There’s no good way to ferret out the earmarkers, and whether the congresscritters know what they are ultimately voting for. The Read The Bills Act is a good place to start.
Source: Mother Jones, Democrats Will End War in Iraq with… Pork?, by Johnathan Stein, March 3, 2007

source: New York Times, Earmarks Find Way Into Spending Bill, By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, September 30, 2006