A High Price For A Hollow Victory

[drfemoe]

http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/9301

Sen. Byrd delivered the following remarks on November 3, 2003, as the Senate debated whether to grant final Congressional approval to the president's $87 billion funding request for the military and Iraqi reconstruction.

The Iraq supplemental conference report before the Senate today has been widely described as a victory for President Bush. If hardball politics and lock-step partisanship are the stuff of which victory is made, then I suppose the assessments are accurate. But if reasoned discourse, integrity and accountability are the measures of true victory, then this package falls far short of the mark.

In the end, the president wrung virtually every important concession he sought from the House-Senate conference committee. Key provisions that the Senate had debated extensively, voted on, and included in its version of the bill—such as providing half of the Iraq reconstruction funding in the form of loans instead of grants—were thrown overboard in the conference agreement. Senators who had made compelling arguments on the Senate floor only days earlier to limit American taxpayers' liability by providing some of the Iraq reconstruction aid in the form of loans suddenly reversed their position in conference and bowed to the power of the presidency.

Before us today is a massive $87 billion supplemental appropriations package that commits this nation to a long and costly occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, and yet the collective wisdom of the House and Senate appropriations conference that produced it was little more than a shadow play, choreographed to stifle dissent and rubber stamp the president's request.

Perhaps this take-no-prisoners approach is how the president and his advisers define victory, but I fear they are fixated on the muscle of the politics instead of the wisdom of the policy. The fact of the matter is, when it comes to policy, the Iraq supplemental is a monument to failure.

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