Illinois Democratic Party Leadership Helps Orchestrate Passage of Iraq War Spending Bill

 

“We have put an end to blank checks for war and an end to the president’s policy of more troops, more money, more time and more of the same,” said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. “We have begun the process of implementing new policies, of bringing accountability to this war, and of forging a new direction in Iraq.”

“I hate this agreement. I’m going to vote against it, even though I negotiated it.”

House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.)

 

Today's vote on HR 2206 – to provide the Bush administration with continued funding for the rolling atrocity that is the U.S. occupation of Iraq – provides one of the more stunning examples of Democratic Party leadership duplicity.

 

The bill predictably passed the house with overwhelming Republican Party support – enough to allow a majority of Democrats to vote against the bill even as their party leadership worked behind the scenes for days to orchestrate its passage. House majority leader Nancy Pelosi was among those casting a no vote, at the same time that her close allies on the floor pushed the legislation through with her blessing. It will be left to Pelosi’s constituents to disavow her of the notion that residents in her district are too stupid to grasp her perfidy.

 

There’s plenty to go around. Illinois Democratic congressmen who voted for the bill include the south side’s resident congressional right winger, Dan Lipinski. Another prominent pro-war voter: Democratic Party uber hack Rahm Emanuel, a lad who cut his teeth bullying party players on behalf of Bill Clinton and Chicago mayor Richie Daley, and who is now sinking his fangs in the hides of rare wayward House Democrats on behalf of the pro-business centrists who call the shots in the national party infrastructure. No-one should be surprised by Emanuel's vote — he was a vocal advocate of his former boss's policy of insensate bombing in Iraq in the wake of the first gulf war, a policy that dovetailed with sanctions under Clinton to shorten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

 

Prominent Illinois Dems who voted no include Jan Schakowsky, Danny Davis, Bobby Rush and Jesse Jackson Jr. One wonders if they’ll muster the backbone to call out this slick legislative maneuver and its architects … including Emanuel and Pelosi … for what it is – a carefully orchestrated capitulation that will cost untold numbers of lives and perpetuate the horror that is daily life in Iraq.

 

Don't wonder too much. Legislators like Schakowsky are particularly closely allied to Emanuel, and not just on lib pop issues like affordable prescription drugs. Neither Schakowsky nor any of the rest of the Illinois Democratic Party congressional delegation — or any Congressional Dems or wannabee's, for that matter – are likely to buck the powerful chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee … even though two-thirds of Emanuel's hand-picked (and distinctly NOT anti-war) congressional candidates LOST their bids for office last November.

 

In the Senate, the vote was not even close. 80 senators – including Senate leader Harry Reid and Illinois liberal darling and Majority Whip Dick Durbin – voted to continue to bankroll the Iraq disaster. That provided an opportunity for three Dems running for president and under pressure to oppose the war – Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama, and Christopher Dodd – to vote no. No problem! Not like those newly-come-to-jesus-naysayers were going to sway the outcome, although Obama has been careful in recent months to promote what he describes as his long-standing opposition to the war. At least this particular war. Some may recall that Obama volunteered that preemptively bombing Iran should they prove to be insufficiently supine to U.S. policy demands in the region would be ok with him. In 2004.

 

The Iraq war funding bill that the House and Senate passed tonight is a deft perpetuation of the Machiavellian maneuvers that have characterized the Democratic Party leadership’s legislative agenda since the party won a majority stake in the most recent round of congressional elections last November. To whit: in a procedural scheme that would have done Niccolo proud, Dem leaders tacked on several amendments to the bill that passed today. Those amendments include more funding for Katrina victims, veterans care, an increase in the minimum wage, and health care funding for uninsured kids – no doubt including the children of active duty military personnel.

 

These are all fine legislative initiatives, of course – but the house vote on these amendments allowed Democrats to vote overwhelmingly FOR the amendments but AGAINST the overarching bill that continues to bankroll the war. The upshot? An Illinois legislator like Jan Shakowski can argue she voted to support poor people while preserving her pristine record of refusing to support funding for the war.

 

But those ‘good’ votes do little to change the legislative reality on the ground – that the Democratic party leadership continues to make funding for the war possible, deflecting hundreds of billions of dollars from funding for access to affordable health care, housing and education and other human needs for millions of Americans.

 

The vote also underscores the Democratic Party leadership's terminal tone deafness – or, gasp, perhaps instead, their terminal indifference to the popular opposition that brought them their majority stake last November. Today's vote comes on the same day that a CBS News/New York Times poll reports that 76% of Americans think the war is going badly – up ten points in the last month – and only 35% now say the invasion was the 'right thing to do'.

 

Will today's jockeying for the opportunity to cast a ‘good’ vote fool the voters? Ask yourself: do you have ‘stupid’ tattooed in Day-Glo orange on your forehead? At the very least, today's vote begs the question: how long will pro-peace Democratic voters put up with this bullshit from hacks like Pelosi and Emanuel, given, for example, the latter's utter failure to even pick winning candidates? But that's not really the point, is it, when shills like Emanuel serve a much more important function – to ensure that the party's elected minions don't steer too vigorously from the pro-business, pro-empire neo-liberal line that has come to increasingly characterize party politics in the last two decades.

 

Let's be clear: Democrats did have another choice today – they could have fought tooth and nail to stall a vote on a war funding package … and then AS A PARTY refused to vote for it if it came to the floor. The bill could quite possibly have failed in the house. At the very least, the party that claims to represent the anti-war majority in this country could have stood by the core principle that got them elected in the first place. 

 

Instead, the party leadership is banking on the fact that anti-war voters have nowhere else to go, and will once again swallow a betrayal of stupendous proportions – and monstrous consequences for U.S. troops in the region and many hundreds of times more Iraqis who bear the brunt of this war.

 

Perhaps you feel like reaching out to legislators like Rahm Emanuel directly about his duplicity. Perhaps you've just got a burning itch to stake out his office with a picket – and plenty of signs that ID him as a war criminal. This might help: 
http://www.house.gov/emanuel/
3742 West Irving Park Road
Chicago, IL 60618
phone: 773-267-5926
fax: 773-267-6583

 

Don't stop there. For contact – and office location – info on the entire confab of congressional clowns, see below:

 

The Senate: http://www.senate.gov/

The House: http://www.house.gov/