01/22/2010

PREVIOUS POST
Congressman notices disturbing tactics in first year > Colorado Community Newspapers Online - News Around Town > Elbert County News > News During my first year in Congress, I witnessed a disturbing pattern in legislative strategy pursued by Democrat leaders. Often in Congress, non-controversial provisions are attached to annual authorizing and funding bills, which in essence, become legislative vehicles for other measures. It’s not a new practice. Both parties have long used this as a tactic to move legislation through Congress, but the Democrats’ escalation last year using all three troop funding bills as a means to pass extremely controversial and unrelated social and economic policy was inappropriate and set a terrible precedent.I firmly believe we should supply those who risk their lives for our country with the resources they need without conditions and without using them to accomplish other controversial legislative goals.A brief review of the three measures illuminates the liberal Democrats’ strategy of hijacking must-pass troop funding bills for political purposes.Early in 2009, Democrat leaders decided to use H.R. 2346, an emergency war funding bill, as a vehicle to send billions of taxpayer dollars to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Realizing they would have a difficult time getting support for providing more than $100 billion in new loan authority for the IMF, Democrats decided to tack the measure on to the emergency war funding bill.With a $12 trillion national debt and having already pushed through an auto industry bailout, a stimulus bailout, and a bank bailout, the highly controversial measure amounting to a $108 billion global bailout, should have been considered on its own merit. Instead, Democrats chose to use our troops and emergency funding for them as leverage to pass another taxpayer funded bailout.I unquestionably support providing our troops the funding they need, but I could not be complicit in allowing Democrats to force our troops to shoulder the additional burden of carrying the authorization and appropriation of over...

Recent Comments