Barak Hussein Mohammad Obama's attacks on
the Wa****ngton status quo are all talk and no walk.
****k Or Priorities?
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Tuesday, June 24, 2008 4:20 PM PT
A flap over flood prevention shows it's Barak Obama
who is firmly for business-as-usual in Congress and that
John McCain stands for real change.
When the levee breaks, you see lot of toxic sludge left
behind. Some of it comes in the form of campaign
rhetoric, such as Obama's charge last weekend that
McCain "opposed legislation to fund levees and flood
control programs, which he considers ****k."
Obama made his remark to a group of mayors in
Miami on Saturday not long after visiting the flood
zones in the Midwest. McCain had made his own
tour of the region, and Obama clearly wanted to paint
him as something of a hypocrite.
But the true "flood of hypocrisy," as the McCain camp put
it, was really coming from Obama. Here's why.
McCain did oppose the 2007 Water Resources
Development Act, and that bill, passed over President Bush's
veto, does fund flood-control projects. The trouble is that it
funds so much else.
In classic log-rolling style ("You vote for my earmarks and
I'll vote for yours"), Congress took a $14 billion House
version and a $15 billion Senate bill and compromised, if
you can call it that, on a final version costing $23 billion.
As Bush noted in his veto message, the hundreds of
earmarked projects and programs would not only waste
taxpayer money, but also sidetrack the Army Corps of
Engineers from its core flood-prevention mission.
It also confirmed the Corps' role as the water boy for
Congress, an agency hijacked by lawmakers to carry out
their pet projects in defiance of any priorities set by the
executive branch.
As Time magazine's Matthew Grunwald said of the bill, it
coddles "a dysfunctional agency," perpetuates "a
dysfunctional system" and "sets the stage for future
Katrina's."
What Obama failed to point out is that McCain and a
small bipartisan group of senators actually tried to fix the
water bill's most glaring flaw, its choice of ****k over
priorities.
McCain co-sponsored an amendment by Wisconsin
Democrat Russ Feingold that would have set up a
commission to rank projects based on national need. The
Senate voted 69-22 against this constructive idea, with
Obama joining the "nays."
That vote is significant for the current campaign, because
it clearly shows who stands for politics-as-usual and who
stands for change.
The Feingold amendment promised real change in the corrupt
culture of earmarks. (Corrupt, because it's a form of
vote-buying from local and state interests at the expense of
the national good). It would have steered money and effort
toward the most pressing needs, such as stronger levees. It
might even have helped restore the public's trust in Congress.
Obama's vote against it strongly suggests that his attacks on
the Wa****ngton status quo are all talk and no walk.
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