Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Obama breaks another pledge
Yet again when it comes to actually being President instead of just running for the office, Obama changes his tune again. If a sentence starts with “Obama said”’ it likely is going to be about something that is not true.
From not closing Gitmo to not ending Don't Ask Don't Tell, to changing timelines for withdrawing from Iraq to appointing lobbyists to his administration, pretty much anything Obama said during the campaign has changed dramatically now that he is President and gets to actually make the decisions that he derided the previous President for.
From Fox News:
A year after President Obama pledged to end the practice of funding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with "emergency" spending bills, the Senate is taking up a $60 billion request that would do exactly that.
The spending bill, which includes $33 billion for the two wars in addition to disaster relief funds and aid for Haiti, is running headlong into concern from war-weary Democrats and deficit-conscious Republicans.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called the bill a "heavy lift" in her chamber. But the Senate, which is taking up the request first, could be the scene of a spending stand-off between Democrats and Republicans.
Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., plans to offer an amendment requiring Congress to offset the cost of the package with spending cuts elsewhere. He slammed the administration for continuing to use the "emergency" supplemental to fund the wars -- by designating the spending bill as "emergency," Congress avoids having to find a way to pay for it.
"The last day war funding was unforeseen was September 10, 2001," the first-term senator said in a written statement. "This legislation is designed to bail out career politicians who want to avoid the hard work of prioritizing spending."
The Bush administration routinely used supplemental spending bills to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama criticized the practice as a candidate and when he came into office pledged to keep war funding within the traditional budget request.
"For seven years, we have been a nation at war. No longer will we hide its price," he said in his February 2009 address to a joint session of Congress.
When Obama requested $83 billion in additional funding last spring for the wars, he said he would draw the line there.
"This is the last planned war supplemental," he wrote in April 2009 to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, calling for "an honest, more accurate and fiscally responsible estimate of federal spending" after years of "budget gimmicks and wasteful spending."
But while Congress provided $130 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan at the end of last year as part of the traditional budget process, Obama this year came back to Capitol Hill for the additional $33 billion -- mostly to cover the cost of sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan.
"The irony certainly isn't lost on us," a Senate GOP aide told FoxNews.com. "Obviously they stuck with that pledge about as well as they stuck with most the other pledges they made."
# posted by Ingineer66 @ 5/26/2010 04:17:00 PM 
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