House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sees unrest among House Democrats over the war in Afghanistan, specifically its cost, The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim reports. "There is unrest in our caucus about: can we afford this war?" Pelosi said on a conference call with financial reporters and bloggers.
Prominent Democrats David Obey (WI), who chairs the Appropriations Committee, and John Murtha (PA), a close ally of Pelosi's who chairs the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, both want any troop increase to be fully paid for.
Pelosi pulled her caucus together in 2007 to oppose new funding for the
Iraq war without benchmarks; now, it's a Democratic president who will
be asking congressional Democrats to go along with more troops, and she
may be in the position of trying to sway them into agreement with the
Obama administration--oddly similar and opposite to her role during the
Bush years.
Absolutely it should be fully paid for. How about taxing the the wealthiest 1%. I know it's crazy.....
The primary role of the FEDERAL government is to provide for the safety of its citizens. That being said lets drop some of the other garbage entitlement programs and do what the Commander in Chief is supposed to do.
which ones? just curious. and how much would that save?
Well lets start with the unemployment extension, use some of the stimulus funds here instead of being wasted on programs that are clearly not creating or saving jobs, there can clearly be reductions in Medicaid...that gets us started.
If you're willing to start by scrapping the mortgage interest deduction, I'll go along with that. Homeowners are the biggest special-interest group in the nation.
This, and the first time homebuyers credit.
Hey JB, do you mean HR- 3548 - The Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2009? That act extends unemployment insurance benefits by 13 weeks in states that have jobless rates above 8.5 percent?
That's set to expire in December of this year and even the GOP's own website says the bill will only cost $1.4BB by the CBO's estimate.
That's just not very much money.
http://www.gop.gov/bill/111/1/hr3548
By the way, unemployment insurance extension is a really, really, popular bill - like 88% popular:
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h3548/show
What would you like to cut in Medicaid?
If the Iraq war had been taxed from the start it never would have happened. All wars shoudl be "pay as you go"