Even with Congress adjourned for the Easter recess, lawmakers and President Bush are trading unusually harsh barbs over Iraq and spending.
Bush’s “policies have failed and his escalation endangers our troops and hurts our national security,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said after Bush’s Rose Garden speech this week about the congressional-approved war-spending bill. “Neither our troops nor the American people can afford this strategy any longer.”
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., accused Bush of being “out of touch.”
“After the deaths of more than 3,200 brave American soldiers and the expenditure of more than $400 billion, the president continues to insist that we pursue a failing stay-the-course strategy,” he said.
For Bush’s part, he called Democrats irresponsible and accused them of playing political games on funding the war that undercut the troops.
Typically, when Congress leaves town, tempers tone down. But thanks to Democratic control over both chambers combined with the divisive issue of the Iraq war, the hot rhetoric continues full-time.
When House Republicans read in Military Times that Democrats are erasing the phrase “global war on terror” from the 2008 defense budget, they sprang.
“How do Democrats expect America to fight and win a war they deny is even taking place?” House Republican Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, wondered. “It’s no wonder Democrats don’t like the phrase ‘Global War on Terror.’ They have completely failed to take the threat of global terrorism seriously.”
The two sides also have sparred over the war-spending bill that contains about $20 billion in “pork,” as well as timetables for withdrawal from Iraq.
Democrats attacked the Bush administration over its various estimates for when the military will run out of money for operations in Iraq, which a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service dispelled. Democrats warned Bush to quit spreading misleading information, a not-so-veiled reference to the botched intelligence that the administration relied upon before invading Iraq.
The jet fumes from lawmakers going home had barely cleared last week before the bickering began.
“Our troops in harm’s way do not have the luxury of taking a two-week break,” Boehner said. “Until Congress passes a clean troop-funding bill that supports our men and women in uniform, neither should we.”
