Harman on Emergency Supplementals for Iraq

Jane had another blog post up at Huffington Post a couple days ago (is she going to do this on a regular basis, I wonder?). She quite rightly decries the fact that Bush has funded most of the Iraq War costs outside of the normal budgeting process, and that their excuse for doing so is totally without merit.

The Bush Administration has claimed emergency spending is necessary because the costs of a protracted war on terror are not known. Nonsense. Both the Korean and the Vietnam Wars were almost entirely financed through the regular appropriations process - not emergency supplementals.

The White House will soon ask for over $100 billion in new emergency war spending, Adjusted for inflation, that is more than we spent in 1968, the most expensive year of the war in Vietnam. And the lion's share of that funding was done through the regular process.

So, now that Bush is going to do the same thing again to fund the war for another year, Jane is going to put a stop to it, right? Not exactly.

There must be no more blank checks for this President, and I predict this will be the last "emergency" supplemental in the new Democrat-controlled Congress.

Did you get that? Per Jane, no more blank checks,after this one

I'd like to hear a little more why it is, if this cheating of the budget process is such a bad thing to do (which, as one of the younger generation who'll be faced with paying off the debt it racks up, I agree it is), that she doesn't want to actually put a stop to it now. (I wonder if Pay As You Go budget rules would even apply to emergency supplemental spending. I bet not.)

I am crossing my fingers that there's a reason for letting him get away with this trick yet again other than that Jane's afraid of being portrayed as against the military. Because this war will never end if Democrats are that cowardly.