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Tragic Political Games with American Troops' Lives

JustMyPOV

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"In a rush to get out of town before the holidays, GOP leaders wrapped their $453 billion defense-spending bill on Monday morning in a basketful of year-end goodies.

They tacked on $29 billion for Gulf Coast hurricane relief and $4 billion to help prepare for a possible outbreak of bird flu. Both were easy additions, but by dawn's early light on Monday, after an all-night session, lawmakers added a controversial provision allowing drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The defense-spending bill, as agreed to in conference with Senate negotiators, was then passed 308-106."

Fox News Report

The ANWR drilling provision has always failed to come to a vote in the Senate, so what does the GOP do? They add it to a "must pass" defense-spending bill just before the holiday break to try and force an up vote on it. This is exactly the sort of behavior that we've seen over and over again from the GOP leadership, so I can't honestly say I'm surprised, however...

To put the lives of American Troops in jeopardy to try to sneak a controversial piece of legislation through is thoroughly irresponsible, and exactly the reason why they're doing so poorly in opinion polls, in my opinion. Is such an important piece of legislation to preserve the safety of our brave men and women serving our country really the place to be playing such dangerous political games?
 
All I can say is......thank whomever that I didn't vote for this administration.
 
JustMyPOV said:
"In a rush to get out of town before the holidays, GOP leaders wrapped their $453 billion defense-spending bill on Monday morning in a basketful of year-end goodies.

They tacked on $29 billion for Gulf Coast hurricane relief and $4 billion to help prepare for a possible outbreak of bird flu. Both were easy additions, but by dawn's early light on Monday, after an all-night session, lawmakers added a controversial provision allowing drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The defense-spending bill, as agreed to in conference with Senate negotiators, was then passed 308-106."

Fox News Report

The ANWR drilling provision has always failed to come to a vote in the Senate, so what does the GOP do? They add it to a "must pass" defense-spending bill just before the holiday break to try and force an up vote on it. This is exactly the sort of behavior that we've seen over and over again from the GOP leadership, so I can't honestly say I'm surprised, however...

To put the lives of American Troops in jeopardy to try to sneak a controversial piece of legislation through is thoroughly irresponsible, and exactly the reason why they're doing so poorly in opinion polls, in my opinion. Is such an important piece of legislation to preserve the safety of our brave men and women serving our country really the place to be playing such dangerous political games?

Are you new to politics or something? Why do you think McCain tacked his so-called anti-torture bill to the defense bill instead of making it a stand-alone bill?
 
Stinger said:
Are you new to politics or something? Why do you think McCain tacked his so-called anti-torture bill to the defense bill instead of making it a stand-alone bill?

That would have passed overwhelmingly anyway, there was a huge amount of bipartisan support for it, it wasn't a couple of days before the holiday break, there was time for debate, and the bill/attachment were debated before they passed. What you're bringing up is not comparable to what I posted about, above. The attachment mentioned above is controversial and has consistantly failed to come to a vote in the Senate. So the GOP has moved to force their agenda through with no debate and no revisions.

It's not really about the fact that it was attached, the government would move at a horribly slow pace if they didn't use this practice. That's not the outrageous part. It's the time-table on which the Senate is expected to act upon this bill+ammendments, allowing very little time for debate or revision, and even if they did revise it, the House would not be there to approve the changes until they resume session next year.

I'd generally prefer that the Senators at least have the opportunity to fully review and debate something so important before voting to pass it. Now, they've been literally forced to pass it immediately to avoid the obvious disaster that would occur if the defense-spending bill that it's attached to fails to pass before the end of the Senate session.

I'm sure this type of thing has been pulled by both parties, but I can't find a single instance that would put the lives of so many of our sons and daughters at risk. All for a controversial piece of legislation that the geological survey has shown would yield very little oil and scarcely make a dent in our dependance on foreign sources. This is a shameful misuse of the rules on the part of the GOP leadership, and I'm sure that whether you support or don't support ANWR drilling, whether you are a Democrat, a Republican, or an Independant, surely you can see how this is reckless.

I doubt that Democrats will be willing to risk the lives of our troops, and they will have to play along this transparant ploy to move their agenda forward, but I'll pose this question, nonetheless: What do you figure would happen now if the Democrats decided to stand their ground and not allow the passage of this legislation?

I figure that the House would either have to call an emergency session to ensure any revision would be passed before the end of their holiday break, or I could be wrong, and they could play politics, allowing the spending bill to lay waiting, risking the lives of our troops in the process. It shouldn't have to be like that, but it seems to be the aim of the GOP leadership to either force the Democrats to look bad by not passing the spending bill, or forcing them to pass attached legislation that the Senate has failed to vote for cloture on repeatedly.
 
Stinger said:
Are you new to politics or something? Why do you think McCain tacked his so-called anti-torture bill to the defense bill instead of making it a stand-alone bill?

THAT is good, forces Bush to agree with it because he wanted to keep torturing people, strictly against the Geneva Conventions.

How, THIS case however, is just plain stupid.
The goal here was to attempt to discredit the Democratic Party by putting the ANWR deal in there so that Dems would vote against it, then tell the people of America that Democrats voted against spending for Iraq, Katrina, Avian Flu, but fail to mention that drilling in ANWR was tacked on as a ploy to cause Dems to vote against it.

You don't have to disagree with EVERYTHING in a bill to vote no, you only have to disagree with one thing.
If you vote yes, you should agree with everything in the bill.

Of course, this doesn't always happen.
 
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