Congress out of town

Don't let the door hit you as you leave -
At this point it is probably a good thing for y'all to be gone. I, and many others like me, are a bit mad at you. Because this is what you did: "Congress passes $120 billion Iraq bill," according to Politico.com's John Bresnehan. The central outcome is this - to quote,

Facing staunch Republican congressional support and the fear of being portrayed as anti-military by cutting off war funding, Democrats were forced to capitulate in the end.
. . . many House Democrats — and some Senate Democrats — went to floor to express their unhappiness with their own leaders for cutting a deal with Bush and the Republicans.

A least Senators Obama, Clinton and Dodd voted against the measure. Hooray for them. And, if other leading Democratic lawmakers had any sense, they would intuit that voters would have applauded their standing up to our current president. (For those of you who have not been regualr readers of S/SW, I use that term (OCP) to remind myself that - thankfully - the man temporary occupies the oval office). But they were not as courageous as they could have been. And that hurts the nation.
The fact remains that the safety net has holes in it - This is probably a more core reason for my displeasure: "Liberals feel stiffed by new Dem majority," from David Baumann in the 5/23 edition of Politico.com.

For 12 years, advocates for social programs argued that the Republican majority shortchanged their programs. And with the Democratic take-back of Congress in November, they clearly had the expectation that happy days were here again for them.
. . . Many of the members who helped the party capture the majority ran on the mantle of fiscal responsibility -- and they are insisting their leaders hold the line on spending.
At the same time, the war in Iraq is sucking up billions of dollars that Democrats might have been able to divert to their favored programs. So they are now searching for the balance between holding the fiscal line to keep "Blue Dog" moderates happy and spending on popular programs to satisfy the Democratic progressive base.

So, House and Senate, when you return you have work to do with us. You must earn back a bit of lost trust. Remember that we have confidence that you can do it. And we expect that you will hear enough back home to give you the backbone you need to follow the November 2006 message you got from us: the door is open to real change.
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