Pork and pullout prospects

House Democratic leaders want to add $24.6 billion to President Bush’s $95 billion request for U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, but not for more weaponry or life-saving armor.

Most of the added money stuffed into the emergency supplemental bill, expected to come up for a vote today, is for the kind of costly, pork barrel, special interest, vote-buying handouts Democrats promised they would end if they won control of Congress.

But less than three months after taking over the House leadership, the Democrats returned to the old logrolling practice of buying votes for a bill whose micromanaging war provisions to ultimately defund our troops has raised deeply troubling doubts in the minds of many of their members.

The bill contains $25 million in subsidies for spinach growers hurt by last year’s E. coli outbreak to persuade Rep. Sam Farr, California Democrat, to hold his nose and vote for it. There’s another $75 million “to ensure proper storage for peanuts” to convince three conservative Democrats from Georgia to do likewise.

Other doubting Democrats were offered $1.48 billion for livestock ranchers, plus $20 million to reclaim damaged farmlands, $500 million for “urgent wildland fire suppression,” and $120 million for shrimp and Atlantic fishing interests.

With so much at stake in the latest attempt to reduce the violence in Iraq and give the Iraqi government time to regain some semblance of control, the spectacle of Democrats using a war funding bill for pure political vote-buying pork was sickening.

“The war supplemental legislation voted out of the Appropriations Committee last week was an exercise in arrogance that demonstrated the utter contempt the majority has for the American people and their hard-earned tax dollars,” said Rep. John Shadegg, Arizona Republican. “We are at war with a ruthless global terrorist network, yet the appropriators allocated hundreds of millions in funds to gratuitous pork projects,” he said.

The opening paragraph on Page 2 of the bill begins this way: “Title I — Supplemental Appropriations for the Global War on Terror — Chapter 1, Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service.”

“Forget the Marines; send in the meat inspectors,” the Wall Street Journal said in an editorial titled ” ‘Peanuts’ for [David] Patraeus,’ ” the U.S. commander in Iraq.

The political rationale behind the Democrats’ pork barrel gambit was the difficulty of coming up with a 218-vote majority in the House where many in their party were squirming over the prospect of imposing a complicated obstacle course of “benchmarks” that could force a U.S. pullout to begin within 180 days.

But even if Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her antiwar aide-de-camp John Murtha were able to come up with 218 votes, it’s doubtful the bill would pass the Senate, where Democrats have been unable to move any pullout legislation.

Last week, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid couldn’t even cobble together a simple majority for a bill that would set a deadline for U.S. troop withdrawal that faced a certain veto from President Bush.

All this occurs against some early, anecdotal signs troop reinforcements are having an impact on reducing the violence in Baghdad. And with only the first installment of the additional 21,000 plus combat forces that will be in the Iraqi capital by June.

U.S. officials in both parties sent over by the administration to assess the war have been returning home with a more positive outlook for Mr. Bush’s new strategy there. “I got a sense in Baghdad in particular that with the additional checkpoints… that they’re already seeing a difference on the ground,” said Gov. Janet Napolitano, Arizona Democrat.

The decision by Shi’ite death squads to halt their role in the sectarian violence, at least for the time being, has also greatly helped reduce violence there.

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