Today’s Downsizer-Dispatch . . .
The House spent 10 hours Thursday debating a resolution saying “the United States will prevail in the war on terror.” They might as well have debated a resolution saying “the United States will stop murderers from killing people.”
The good news is that something of a debate about our policy in Iraq broke-out anyway. Most notable was Henry Waxman’s laundry-list of the misuse of taxpayers’ money in Iraq. We will try to share some of the lowlights from this list in the days ahead. Meanwhile, here’s how the House voted . . .
* 256 said “we will prevail in the war on terror”
* 152 said “no, we will not”
The partisan breakdown was as follows . . .
* 214 Republicans said “we will prevail in the war on terror”
* 42 Democrats agreed with them
* 3 Republicans said “no, we will not prevail”
* 149 Democrats and 1 Independent agreed that we will not prevail
Downsize DC took a different approach to this silly resolution. We encouraged House members to abstain by voting “present.” 2 Republicans and 3 Democrats did exactly that. An additional 19 members may have sent the same message by not voting at all. The breakdown on this group was 12 Republicans and 7 Democrats. All-in-all 24 House members failed to play the “we will stop murder” charade — 14 Republicans and 10 Democrats.
Now that this sideshow is over we will continue calling for a real debate on the Iraq policy. Given that the House leadership probably assumes they’re now done with this annoying issue, I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to hear from you. You can send your message here.
RTBA MEET-UP GROUPS:
We made no progress on organizing Congressional districts to support the “Read the Bills Act” yesterday. If you would like to be the next person to organize an “RTBA Meet-Up Group” you can do so here.
OPERATION EVERYWHERE:
Due to an attack by “a large ugly insect” on our clerical person, we have no update on how many people started monthly micro-pledges ($3 a month, or more). But we will not be deterred by “large ugly insects.” The drive continues. You can make a monthly pledge or one-time contribution here.
Thank you for being a DC Downsizer.
Perry Willis
Communications Director
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.