Going to Hell with the Congress We Have

From the Veterans for Common Sense site:

In January 2005, the leadership of the 109th Congress removed Representative Chris Smith from his chairmanship of the Veterans Affairs Committee, replacing him with Indiana Representative Steve Buyer.

Why did they do this? Because Rep. Smith was too pro-veteran.

According to a January 11 column by Bob Novak, "The leadership’s problem with Smith has been his insatiable desire to make life better for veterans during 24 years on the Veterans Affairs committee (six years as vice chairman, four years as chairman). That fits the job description set by conservative Democrat Sonny Montgomery of Mississippi during his 12-year chairmanship."

How corrupt do Congressional Republicans have to be to get criticized by the Douchebag of Liberty? It truly boggles the mind.

Congress is rightly concerned about the huge deficits our government is incurring, with the combination of a war and tax-cuts rapidly bankrupting our country. But the 2005 budget, passed by Congress and approved by Congress, managed to find $9 billion to pay for pork-barrel projects in members' districts, including:

$7 million for a bus-maintenance facility in Tempe, Arizona
$430,000 to restore the Fox Tucson Theatre
$3 million for a grape research laboratory
$1.5 million for a demonstration project to transport naturally chilled water from Lake Ontario to Lake Onondaga
$75,000 for the Paper Industry International Hall of Fame in Appleton, Wis.
$200,000 for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
$3 million for the First Tee Program in St. Augustine, Florida
$1 million dollars (ironically) for the Missouri Pork Producers Association

How did they pay for all of this? Among other things, Congress cut the Pentagon account used to pay for up-armored humvees. A Scripps-Howard study of combat deaths in Iraq shows that 1 in 5 of the over 1,300 U.S. deaths in Iraq took place inside humvees.

God forbid we would've had to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame we had, and not the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame we wish we had.