Okay politics junkies, it's time to pull out your handy-dandy, one-stop guide to the Defense appropriations battles currently raging in Congress.
Today, amendment #1 went down the tubes. Here's the rub:
Spotlighted by EC last month, Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) will propose a troop readiness measure increasing the amount of time active and reserve forces spend at home between deployments. While the precise numbers are unclear, if it passes, it will prevent the Pentagon from relieving units rotating out of Iraq in the spring with active-duty forces who haven't been home at for at least as long as their last tour, and three times as long for reservists. Due to the strain the four-year war has put on the military, Webb's amendment would very likely stop the surge by early 2008 and prevent any future escalation.
Seems a no-brainer, eh? Ensure that the national-security-endangering overextension of our military is curtailed, forcing the Bush administration to either make radical changes in how it acquires personnel (read, draft), or back down. IMHO, I think it's unwise to break our army on George W's personal war.
Just moments ago, Senate Republicans succeeded in a filibuster in which they refused to end debate on Virginia Democrat Jim Webb's S. 2012, which would have placed strict limits on National Guard and reserve deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan as well as mandating more downtime at home before active-duty combat troops are returned to battle.
The vote was 56-41 to end debate, with 60 votes needed to move to a full, up-or-down vote on the Webb measure. Once again, the GOP has been successful at destroying another Democratic attempt at helping service members and their families caught in the buzzsaw of the Bush administration's lies and incompetence.
There's not much more original contempt I can pile on our Republican Senators that Bob Geiger and Steve Benen haven't already express, so I'll just add a "hear hear."
An interesting piece of information to take away from this: seven Republican broke ranks and voted for cloture on the bill -- that is, ending the filibuster. Those seven are as follows: Norm Coleman, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, John Sununu, Chuck Hagel, Gordon Smith, and John Warner. As Bob Geiger notes, "all but Snowe are up for election next year." And Coleman's, Collins', Sununu's, and Smith's seats are considered pick up opportunities for Democrats.
Doesn't take much rocket scientistry to figger out the GOP does know Americans are against them, that their votes are unpopular, and that they're doing the wrong thing.
The question that bugs me is, why?
(Jon and Max, by the way, voted right on this amendment.)
