Against it before they were for it

The Majority Accountability Project has a write-up on the Democrat freshmen House members who backtracked on their pledge to not support any war supplemental that included a timetable.

If you see your Congressperson’s name on that list, make sure to send ’em a line or three and let them know how you feel about it. On a related note, click here if you’d like to know more about the Majority Accountability Project. Hey, somebody’s gotta keep those Dems accountable ;)

And speaking of the war supplemental, check out what the Dems’ latest stunt is regarding what to add to it (emphasis added):

WASHINGTON (AP) – Increasing the minimum wage should be easy for a Congress controlled by Democrats, especially with President Bush’s pledge of support.

But a $2.10 boost for America’s lowest-paid workers is again being delayed, this time in a tussle over whether to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq.

It’s been 10 years since the last minimum wage increase, and boosting it from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour over the next two years was a key element of Democrats’ midterm election platform. They even added a sweetener for Republicans: $4.8 billion in tax cuts for small businesses over 10 years.

But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., decided to attach the minimum wage provisions to the Iraq war spending bill. Normally that’s must-pass legislation. Now it’s certain to be the subject of Bush’s second veto after Democrats loaded it up with a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops.

“That’s just a temporary detour,” said Alan Viard, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He said Democrats will find a way to quickly move the minimum wage legislation back to the White House.

Republicans say Democrats could have had a minimum wage bill passed and signed by now if they hadn’t added it to the Iraq war bill. “This isn’t about getting a minimum wage increase done, it’s another political stunt that only further delays action,” said White House spokesman Tony Fratto.

Democrats declined to say how they plan to get the bill back to the White House: as a separate bill or, more likely, as an attachment to the next Iraq war spending bill they intend to get to Bush by Memorial Day. The latter, they maintain, would give them a little more leverage by forcing Republicans to vote against money for American troops to block the minimum wage package.

“We will take whatever steps are necessary to get a minimum wage increase enacted into law as quickly as possible,” said Tom Kiley, spokesman for Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chair of the House Education and Labor Committee.

Including using a war supp they know the president will veto, further delaying the money our military desperately needs.

Politics always trumps doing the right thing to Democrats, doesn’t it? Jerks.

In the meantime, the WaPo’s liberal columinst David Broder is not backing down from a piece he recently wrote slamming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for saying “this war is lost”:

NEW YORK David Broder said he wouldn’t change anything in his April 26 column, which angered many readers and caused 50 members of the Senate Democratic Caucus to write a letter criticizing Broder in Friday’s Washington Post.

In that Thursday piece, Broder criticized Harry Reid for saying the Iraq War is lost militarily, compared Reid to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and concluded: “The Democrats deserve better, and the country needs more, than Harry Reid has offered as Senate majority leader.”

Here’s a copy of that letter the Senate Dems wrote to the editor of the WaPo.

Isn’t that something? We’ve got heated debates going on in the House and Senate about a war supplemental both houses know will be vetoed, and 50 yahoos in the Senate somehow found the time to write a letter to the Washington Post defending Harry Reid because they didn’t like that he was criticized? Um, what’s that about ‘setting priorities,’ Dems?

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