Just one more time… I promise
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is promising the anti-war faction of her caucus that if they vote for the $94.2 billion supplemental for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan just this one last time, there won’t be any more in the future.
“There won’t be any more war supplementals,” Pelosi told reporters Thursday. “So my message to my members is: this is it.”
But Pelosi is lifting the benchmarks attached to the funding by House Appropriations Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., who on Monday gave Obama one year to demonstrate he can stabilize the two nations and listed benchmarks like eliminating corruption and combating insurgents.
“Mr. Obey, by his own admission, was giving his own opinion,” Pelosi said. “The legislation that will come before the committee this week and the Congress next week has no timeline or anything like that. He was just speaking his own view, as he has made very, very clear.”
Pelosi shifted blame for the supplemental on former President Bush, who she said only funded the war for six months, leaving congress to come up with the money for the other half of the year.
Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Ca., founder of the Out of Iraq Caucus, said she will not vote for the extra funding and many other liberals may follow her lead, but Democrats nonetheless will be able to pass the bill with the help of Republicans, who support Obama’s policies in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The bill allocates funding for troops, equipment and other support in the two countries as well as aid for veterans back home. A sizable chunk of the supplemental will be designated to humanitarian aide in Africa and other nations and $2 billion is designated to combat flu.
