By Staff
WASHINGTON – U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, and 153 of his Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives pledged to President Bush that they will sustain a presidential veto of the emergency security spending bill the House passed.
The spending measure, loaded down with pork and conditions on U.S. troops, passed the House March 23 by a 218-212 vote.
Of the $124.3 billion in funding, $95.5 billion is for the Iraq war and the remainder is for various unrelated pork projects, including millions for shrimp, spinach and peanut-related projects.
Cass County's congressman voted against the measure.
"Not only does the Democrats' spending scheme tie the hands of our troops, our generals and our president, it further delays the delivery of much-needed armor and equipment that our courageous troops so desperately deserve to carry out their mission," Upton said, adding, "$120 million for shrimp $74 million for peanut storage and $25 million for spinach are utterly irrelevant for inclusion in this emergency security spending bill. This is a bill tailor-made for Popeye and the Bubba Gump rather than our military. We have a responsibility to shed the $28 billion in unrelated pork and pass a clean spending bill, no strings attached, that will allow our brave servicemen and women to do their jobs in combat. The safety and well-being of our troops is at stake."
This past Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., openly admitted that Democratic leaders used pork to buy votes to pass the war spending bill.
Asked by host Tim Russert why the Democrats would put pork-barrel spending in such a serious bill, Rangel responded, "Because they needed the votes."
Upton said progress on the measure has been unnecessarily delayed an additional two weeks as Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., elected not to appoint conferees to begin negotiations with the Senate on the war spending bill and instead left town for the two-week spring break.
The Senate has already appointed its negotiators.
President Bush touched upon the issue Wednesday during a Rose Garden press conference, declaring, "It has now been 57 days since I requested that Congress pass emergency funds for our troops. Instead of passing clean bills that fund our troops on the front lines, the House and Senate have spent this time debating bills that undercut the troops by substituting the judgment of politicians in Washington for the judgment of our commanders on the ground, setting an arbitrary deadline for withdrawal from Iraq and spending billions of dollars on pork barrel projects completely unrelated to the war."