Congress And Public Hearings - Truly Farcical!

When is the American public going to realize that they are
being treated with irrelevant bull crap everytime one of our
moronic representatives moves his\her lips? This amendment
concerning a $10B "loan" to Iraq is merely a CYA move by politicos
who are scared to death that the folks back home have had it up-
to here. You tell me if whether it's "granted" or "loaned"
makes one bit of difference. They all want to get on"Record"
that they are adamantly against adding to the deficit. The proof
of the theatrical nature of these extravaganzas is close monitoring
of voting records and the identification of each individual's
benefactors. You can predetermine who will write a future bill
by determining what interest group is the pol's largest donor.
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Senate defies Bush on funding request for Iraq



WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Senate dealt a blow to President
George W. Bush (news - web sites)'s request for aid for Iraq (news -
web sites), passing an amendment requiring Baghdad to pay back half of
the 20 billion dollars Washington is allocating for reconstruction.

The vote came late Thursday after the Bush
administration lobbied hard for days against
the amendment, arguing that the money -- part
of the president's 87 billion dollar budget
supplement -- should be in outright grants.

The vote represents the first major
congressional defeat for Bush on an issue
relating to Iraq. Both houses of Congress are dominated by members of
Bush's Republican Party.

The amendment was adopted by a vote of 51 to 47 following a long and
impassioned debate that left the outcome hanging until the final moments.

Among those who backed the measure were eight Republicans who
defied the majority position in their party to support it while four
Democrats opposed it.

Opposition leader Tom Daschle, a Democrat, said that in adopting the
amendment, the Senate "sent a strong, bipartisan message to this
administration: It must do more to ensure that America's troops and
taxpayers don't have to go on shouldering this costly burden virtually
alone."

The House of Representatives earlier defeated similar amendments
conditioning aid to Iraq. House and Senate representatives must now meet
to work out a compromise version that would become law when signed
by Bush.

Both the House and the Senate approved the remaining funds -- 67 billion
dollars to finance military forces in the region. A vote could come on
Bush's spending request as early as Friday.

One of the Senate amendment supporters, Michigan Democrat Carl Levin,
said that Iraq "has the right to be treated as a partner," and therefore "can
help finance its own reconstruction, which is a tiny contribution for a
country with a trillion dollars in liquid gold".

Furthermore, a 20 billion dollar grant "is a message to the world that we
control Iraq," he said.

Arizona Republican Senator John McCain however disagreed. He voted
against the amendment "because I don't want the policy of Iraq to be
decided in Paris or Moscow."

"How can we ask other countries to give money to Iraq while we are
lending money to them?" McCain asked, referring to an international
donors' conference to be held in Madrid next week.

Another Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, however voted for the
amendment. "Twenty billion dollars is more than our entire foreign aid,"
she said. "We have an obligation toward the American taxpayers that their
loan will be repaid in the future when Iraq will be again a prosperous
nation."

Iraq "has an educated population, abundant resources, the second world
oil reserve -- and will have 20 billion a year in oil revenues within two
years," she said.

The Senate amendment, submitted by Democrat Evan Bayh of Indiana,
does allow the United States to scrap 10 billion dollars from Iraq's debt if
other Iraqi creditors -- especially Russia, Saudi Arabia, Germany and
France -- forgo repayment of 90 percent of their outstanding loans.

Bayh earlier complained that he didn't want US taxpayers to grant money
to Iraq so it could turn around and pay money owed to countries like
France and Russia.

Iraq's foreign debt is 93 billion dollars and 153 billion dollars, according to
the US Congressional Research Service.

The vote is a blow for Bush, who personally met with
undecided legislators, and sent Vice President Dick Cheney
(news - web sites) and Secretary of State Colin Powell (news
- web sites) to Congress to lobby against the measure.

Bush's approval ratings however have sunk since asking for
the money in September, and anxiety over the war and -- more
importantly -- the sluggish domestic economy continues to
mount.

Representative Jan Schakowsky, who opposed the measure,
said that many of her fellow Democrats feared they could be
blamed for not supporting US troops abroad. But many
Republicans can also be blamed for approving billions to
rebuild Iraq when money is needed for US schools and jobs,
she said. Tweet