House Appropriations Chair not backing down in fight to end 'misbegotten, stupid' war Jason Rhyne

Published: Friday October 19, 2007



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Print This Email This Obey was 'thunderstruck' at Bush arrogance The Democratic chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee is prepared to play hardball with President Bush over funding the war in Iraq. Rep. David Obey (D-WI), who has pledged to sideline the latest Pentagon funding request until next year in addition to proposing a tax hike to finance the war, says he's not letting anything -- even Democratic leaders like Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- get in his way. Obey, who told the Washington Post that he hates the "misbegotten, stupid, ill-advised" war, pushed past Speaker Pelosi's objections to his plan to levy a tax to pay for the war, the paper reports. "I went to Nancy a week before we did it, and I told her: 'Nancy, I'm gonna do two things,'"said Obey, according to in the Post. "One of them you're gonna like, and one of them you're not." Pelosi, who favored Obey's idea of not addressing war funding this year, took issue with his war tax plan. "Just as I have opposed the war from the outset ... I am opposed to a war surtax," she said of the plan at the beginning of the month, and more recently stated that she didn't think that "an across-the-board tax was a fair one...we don't go forward lightly when we're talking about a tax on all the American people." Undaunted, Obey will introduce the bill next week with Reps. John Murtha (D-PA) and Jim McGovern (D-MA). The measure proposes adding two percent to the taxes of most Americans, and up to a 15 percent increase for wealthier tax payers, according to AP. The chairman is also using the war to put in perspective what he views as comparatively inexpensive appropriations bills that are working their way through Congress. "Obey views the $22 billion in extra domestic spending Democrats want as a drop in the bucket compared with the cost of the war," the paper reports. "He calls Bush's philosophy 'an obscenity.'" The Congressman is taking a hard line against a president he says is a non-negotiator himself. Citing an experience he had discussing homeland security spending with President Bush following the Sept. 11 attacks, Rep. Obey told the Post that the president said at the time that "if you appropriate a dollar more than I've asked for homeland security, I'll veto the bill...I've got time for four or five comments, and I'm out of here." "I cannot tell you what a profound effect that meeting had on me," Obey said. "I was absolutely thunderstruck at the arrogance."

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