Interesting interview by Tim Russert on Meet the Press this morning with Charlies Rangel, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Russert gets right into the issue of all the non-military spending added to the recent appropriation bill to finance the war in Iraq. Here’s part of the transcript -
MR. RUSSERT: Chairman Rangel, welcome back to MEET THE PRESS. Want to talk about your book in a second, but let me start with the war. The House voted for funding for the war with a date certain, March of ‘08, to begin a withdrawal of U.S. troops. But in that bill was $20 billion of so-called pork, money for cricket infestation, tours of the Capitol, security at the National Convention, peanut crops. Why would the Democrats put that kind of money in such a serious bill?REP. CHARLES B. RANGEL (D-NY): Because they needed the votes. That bill, we lost so many Democrats, one, because people thought we went too far and others because we didn’t go far enough. And so a lot of things had to go into a bill that certainly those of us who respect great legislation did not want in there. But the real question was, were we doing something to stop this immoral war and what could we do instead of doing nothing except do what the president asks us to do?
[Emphasis added]
I find this extraordinary, that the Democrats would have people believe that this is one of the great moral issues of our time, and yet have to resort to vote–buying in order to get their own party members to support the measure. And I couldn’t help notice Rangel’s attempt to place the responsibility for this in the third person – “Because they needed the votes.”