"Pelosi Torpedoes War Tax"

mcjoan (front-paged on Kos):

Speaker Pelosi, with all due respect, who taught you how to fight in politics? Because they either weren't very good as a teacher, or you missed a few lessons. When three respected members of your caucus find a way to refocus the war debate, you take the fight where it leads you. You don't cut it off at the knees.

All told, the Democratic proposal for an "Iraq tax" lasted about four hours. That’s roughly the amount of time from when House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) gave life to the idea with his endorsement to when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) strangled it.

"Just as I have opposed the war from the outset, I am opposed to a draft and I am opposed to a war surtax," Pelosi said in a statement issued this afternoon.

Given that Bush and the GOP have never asked for any kind of sacrifice from the American people beyond those serving in the armed services and their families (from whom they've asked far too much), I agree with Obey on this one when he says ""If you don’t like the cost, then shut down the war." It's a very good starting point for refocusing the debate where it needs to be--on Congress's responsibility to for the costs of war, of Congress's power of the purse.

Hopefully Speaker Pelosi will be more supportive of Rep. Obey's determination to block any further funding of the war without an end date, and to postpone any action on the supplemental until January. Obey's approach is precisely what many of us have been asking of Congress--to use their Constitutional obligation as the branch that controls the money, to use that power to force an end to the occupation.

Obey's laid out his requirements for any future supplemental bill in a press conference today.

"I would be more than willing to report out a supplemental meeting the President’s request if that request were made in support of a change in policy that would do three things.

-- "Establish as a goal the end of U.S. involvement in combat operations by January of 2009."

-- "Ensure that troops would have adequate time at home between deployments as outlined in the Murtha and Webb amendments."

-- "Demonstrate a determination to engage in an intensive, broad scale diplomatic offensive involving other countries in the region."

"But this policy does not do that. It simply borrows almost $200 billion to give to the Departments of State, Defense, Energy, and Justice with no change in sight.

"As Chairman of the Appropriations Committee I have absolutely no intention of reporting out of Committee anytime in this session of Congress any such request that simply serves to continue the status quo."

This is the kind of direct, confrontational approach that the Appropriations Committee Chair needs to take, and that the American people have been asking for. Hopefully his speaker will be there to back him.