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06/18/2003 Archived Entry: "Don't listen to what they say, watch what they do."
Don't listen to what they say, watch what they do.
Sure, The Thug Cabal pays plenty of lip service to the military - but then they go and cut a billion out of the money to pay for improving their housing, to add to The Big Tax Cut. E.J. Dionne tells an interesting tale about something that happened in Congress the other day:
And so last Wednesday, (Rep. David) Obey (D-Wisconsin) entered the laboratory of the subcommittee on military construction and proposed an amendment to restore $1 billion of the $1.5 billion President Bush cut from the budget for military family housing.As Obey noted in an interview, "it's obvious that you have atrocious barracks for the troops with families and also for the single troops." Wouldn't a Congress that passes resolutions "singing hosannas to the troops" give the same troops decent places to live?
But then the experiment kicked in: Obey proposed financing the budget increase by reducing Bush's recent tax cut, but only for the roughly 200,000 Americans who make more than $1 million a year. Under Obey's amendment, these taxpayers would receive a cut of $83,546 this year -- more than most Americans make annually -- instead of the $88,326 they are currently scheduled to receive.
This small contribution to the troops was voted down on a party-line vote. A spokesman for Rep. Joe Knollenberg of Michigan, the Republican chairman of the subcommittee, said that Obey's amendment was inappropriate -- tax matters are properly dealt with in the Ways and Means Committee, he said -- and that Knollenberg hoped "that additional money would be found" to improve housing for the troops.
Obey repeated the same experiment at the subcommittee on homeland security on Thursday, proposing $1 billion in additional spending for homeland security, particularly for port and border security, offset by the same reduction in tax cuts for the most financially fortunate Americans. Rep. Harold Rogers, a Kentucky Republican who chairs the subcommittee, closed the meeting on "national security grounds." An aide to Rogers said that the national security reason for closing the hearing was legit -- Obey said he doubts this -- and that Obey would get to propose his amendment today.
Replies: somebody speaks up.
But don't you see, that $88,326 tax cut will be pumped back into the economy and create millions of high-paying, self-actualizing, life-affirming jobs?
Personally, I'm sitting by my phone waiting for that deluge of job offers to start rolling in!
Posted by metropolitan99 @ 06/18/2003 09:45 AM NY
