Congress Has Their Hands in the Cookie Jar Again and Again

This is an update to a previous blog I wrote for a couple of other sites.

The original blog:

Congress Has Their Hands in the Cookie Jar Again

Congress has decided to redistribute some of the Department of Defense Operating Budget (ammunition, training, supplies, etc.) to pork.  My son is a member of the Ohio National Guard.  Last year his unit was scheduled to be deployed to Iraq.  Six months before the deployment their orders were changed to Kuwait.  Why?  Lack of training to be combat ready.  Lack of training is always about money.

I'm hardly complaining that my son did not get to go to Iraq.  But, some other mothers' sons and daughters had to do an extra tour in Iraq because my son's unit could not be deployed to a combat zone.

Click to see The Washington Times article that names names.  It was truly a bipartisan effort, the kind of effort we can't get on any other issue.

 Update:

Not satisfied with having denied funds in the Defense Spending Bill for activities needed to keep our military trained and supplied, Congress took another shot at our military fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Our representative in the House, Lee Terry, let us know about it.

In a letter from Lee Terry that we received today, he let us know this:

I did vote against the emergency war funding bill, H.R. 2346.  This bill provides emergency supplemental funding for the military, but what you may not know is it also gives billions of dollars to our enemies.  After closely analyzing this bill, the truth is money was cut for our troop to support the IMF by adding $108 billion for foreign economic bailouts.  In fact, the extreme Islamic regime in Iran will get $1.8 billion from IMF funds under this legislation.  It is atrocious when some in Washington use our military as political pawns.  An emergency war funding bill should be about war funding, not about irresponsible government spending.

 The bill contains other spending besides just emergency war funding.  And it is already signed, sealed and delivered into law.  It's just the first I have heard about it.  Not that it was a secret.  There is just too much legislation to track everything.  Even if I worked full time as a Congressional watchdog I couldn't keep up with those people.