Senate returns $60B stripped out war bill to House

[slay]

Source: Associated Press

Senate returns $60B stripped out war bill to House

By ANDREW TAYLOR
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a take-it-or-leave-it gesture, the Senate voted Thursday night to reject more than $20 billion in domestic spending the House had tacked on to its $60 billion bill to fund President Barack Obama's troop surge in Afghanistan.

Instead, the Senate returned to the House a measure limited chiefly to war funding, foreign aid, medical care for Vietnam War veterans exposed to Agent Orange, and replenishing almost empty disaster aid accounts.

The moves repel a long-shot bid by House Democrats earlier this month to resurrect their faltering jobs agenda with $10 billion in grants to school districts to avoid teacher layoffs, $5 billion for Pell Grants to low-income college students, $1 billion for a summer jobs program and $700 million to improve security along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The House bill fell prey to a 46-51 tally that fell short of a simple majority, much less the 60 votes required to defeat a filibuster. The Senate is instead insisting on its almost $60 billion version of the measure, passed on a bipartisan vote in May.



Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CONGRESS_WAR_FUNDING?SITE=AZPHG&SECTION=POLITICS&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2010-07-23-00-04-38

---

My local news website has it titled: "Senate passes $60B war bill, kills House add-ons

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[boppers]

2. "Senator So-and-so(R) voted against increasing border security."

This should make for interesting primary fodder.

[Timbuk3]

3. Gotta watch that deficit spending

The House should reject it.

[and-justice-for-all]

5. Fuck the deficit....

which would not be an issue if we were not occupying the middle east and other countries.

[neverforget]

4. I'm sure this is all offset by cuts elsewhere just like the Republicans

wanted with the unemployment extension. It wasn't? I'm shocked! Money for war but none for the People.

[slay]

6. "$6.2 billion in foreign aid for Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Haiti"

My question is - how the fuck can Republicans (and a few Dems) justify sending 6.2 BILLION DOLLARS to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Haiti, yet not even give $5 billion for Pell Grants here in America to help students afford increasingly expensive college education? Something is VERY VERY wrong with this picture, and our priorities. We can NOT afford this senseless war and the maddening war profiteering! :( :mad: :puke:

[sandnsea]

7. It's a supplemental, not a war bill

If people would stop calling it a war bill, then they'd be able to get the emergency funding in it that's supposed to be there.

[Lasher]

10. That's right.

But this is how it has been framed by those who want supplemental appropriations acts to support funding for the military and nothing else.

[grahamhgreen]

8. The house must NOT pass this bill for the Republican/neo-cons. Troops home now.

[slay]

9. I would LOVE to see the house deny this blood money

it's sick. will we ever learn that war is all a money making scam? sigh...

War Is a Racket
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

War Is a Racket is the title of two works, a speech and a booklet, by retired U.S. Marine Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, one of only 19 people to be twice awarded the Medal of Honor, in which Butler frankly discusses from his experience as a career military officer how business interests have commercially benefited from warfare.

~snip~

It contains this key summary:

"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket