Robert Tagorda and Matt Stinson provide us with an elite group of Democrats who, for pure partisan domestic politics (I defy you to come up with another reason), voted in favor of demanding that the reconstruction funds be loans, yet voted against the over-all bill. In other words, they wanted to merely sabotage the bill to weaken the President politically. Charming, hunh? Here is the list of offenders:
Boxer (D-CA)*
Edwards (D-NC)*
Graham (D-FL)*
Harkin (D-IA)
Hollings (D-SC)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Sarbanes (D-MD)* indicates up for reelection
Assholes. I have made my case here and here why I think the loans are a bad idea- If you disagree, I think you are foolish and wrong, but this sort of nonsense from Senators is just beyond the pale.
MommaBear
You expected common sense and decency from that lot; dream on, lad !!
Andrew | BYTE BACK
Are you calling people assholes before they even comment? Not that it’s much better to do so afterwards, but …
Also Edwards is not up for re-election.
Aakash
“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys…”
– P. J. O’Rourke
“If you give a man a fish, he eats for one day. If you teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime.”
John Cole
Aakash- you act like we are setting up a European style social welfare state with the 20 billion we are going to use to reconstruct Iraq. To keep your fishing anaolgy going, we are just buying them bait and tackle and then teaching them how to fish. The way you act, you would think we are buying them lobster dinners.
DANEgerus
It takes away our ‘clean hands’ and places us amongst the creditors that say the Iraqi’s owe for Saddams criminal debts to the criminal-profiteers(France) that sold to him at outragious prices…
It’s a token fraction of what we spent so let’s just carry the load finacially and morally…
Kathy K
Graham is up for reelection. I’ll vote against him as usual, and he’ll probably get elected anyway.
He’s an idiot. Believe me. He was once governor of the state where I live (I voted against him back then too).
Andrew Lazarus
I don’t understand. You say it would be better if they voted to make the money a GRANT and THEN voted against the final bill? What were people who wanted to spend less money (or even no money) supposed to do on the loan vote? Abstain?? That makes no sense at all!
I don’t think their votes were best policy, but I think your attribution of their behavior to pure partisanship is uncharitable in the extreme.
David Perron
Since someone brought it up:
“Build a man a fire, and he’s warm for a few hours. Set a man on fire, and he’s warm for the rest of his life”.
I know, totally OT. But they started it.
Moe Lane
“I don’t understand. You say it would be better if they voted to make the money a GRANT and THEN voted against the final bill?”
Well, yeah. Better stupidity than cupidity.