[Infowarrior] - Senate's Bold Proposal for Iraq: Sugar Beets and Rural Schools

[Richard Forno]

Wouldn't it be grand to find a way to force Congress to include ONLY the
items related to the title of the proposed legislation?  IE, if the bill is
an 'emergency' authorization for Iraq funding, don't load it up with
domestic spending programs.  If the bill is to fund the Pentagon for the
next fiscal year, don't tack on a national identification card as an
amendment, etc, etc.

Ahhh, the joys of life in Washington.....

-rf


Senate's Bold Proposal for Iraq: Sugar Beets and Rural Schools -- in the
U.S.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/28/AR2007032802
091_pf.html

By Dana Milbank
Thursday, March 29, 2007; A02

Midway through the Senate debate yesterday over the "emergency" spending
bill for Iraq, Barbara Boxer rose to speak in favor -- of strawberries.

"There's a song called 'Strawberry Fields Forever,' " the California
Democrat declared on the Senate floor, as an aide displayed a poster of an
icy berry patch. "This is a strawberry field," Boxer continued, seeking
funds for frostbitten fruit farmers. "It looks like an ice rink. The
strawberries are somewhere in there; they are destroyed. I also want to show
you oranges. . . . Here you can see the icicles near the avocados."

< - >

It's common for lawmakers to complain that a spending bill is "loaded up
like a Christmas tree" with pet projects. But the Iraq Emergency
Supplemental Appropriations Act going through the Senate this week is
unusual in that it is loaded up with Christmas trees.

Specifically, it includes $40 million for a Tree Assistance Program that
provides help for Christmas trees and ornamental shrubs. Also in the
Senate's version of the Iraq bill: $24 million for sugar beets, $3 million
for Hawaiian sugar cane, $13 million for the Ewe Lamb Replacement and
Retention Program, $100 million in compensation for dairy losses, $165.9
million for fisheries disaster relief, and money for numerous other
"emergencies."

This offended the patriotism of a few senators, such as Jim DeMint (R-S.C.),
who called on his fellow citizens to "stand up as Americans, not as spinach
growers, not as milk producers, not as tree farmers."

Most of his colleagues disagreed. They voted, 73 to 24, to keep the
agricultural go