The former Senator Everett Dirkson once said, "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money." This summer Congress passed the PAYGO Act, which essentially ties spending to revenues. Congress conveniently exempted defense-related activities from the bill.
Representative Barbara Lee caught wind of this, and along with thirteen Democrats, voted against PAYGO on those grounds. The members are listed here:
William Clay (MO); Bob Filner (CA); Raul Grijalva (AZ); Maurice Hinchey (NY); Carolyn Kilpatrick (MI); Dennis Kucinich (OH); Barbara Lee (CA); Jim McDermott (WA); Ed Pastor (AZ)
Pete Stark (CA); Bart Stupak (MI); Anthony Weiner (NY).
I can understand if a progressive felt PAYGO was important enough to pass despite this deficiency, but these men and women deserve credit for flagging this issue. As long as our wars are paid for by printing more money, we are setting ourselves up for long-term fiscal ruin, if we're not already hopelessly stuck there.
While we're talking about the defense budget, let's look at the $626,000,000,000 Pentagon budget bill, which was approved yesterday by a vote of 93-7. The bill allocates $128,000,000,000 to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The war in Iraq has cost over $700,000,000,000 since it began, the war in Afghanistan $300,000,000,000. This year's budget officially put the combined price tag over one trillion dollars. So that phrase is no longer hyperbolic. Six of the "no" votes came from war-mongering Republicans, and the seventh was from Russ Feingold, who we honored here last Friday.
Shockingly, the Senate rejected an amendment that would subject private sector defense contractors to competetive bidding, a reform that passed in the House of Representatives. The bill also blocks the transfer of Guantanamo Bay prisoners to any prison on U.S soil, concluding perhaps the most provincial story of the 2009 Congress.
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