In
answer to Armando, via email:
Why I Will Not Vote Against Funding
Senator Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.)
It is time for our troops to come home. And it's time for us to bring them home swiftly. But we have a moral obligation and a constitutional
obligation to bring them home safely.
I'm not new to this position. I never wanted to go to war in the first place. I was one of the 23 who voted against this war four years ago,
on October 11, 2002. I did not believe the administration's arguments then, and I do not believe them now.
In the last few weeks, I've had protesters sit-in my office four times who want me to vote against the spending bill for the war. Some come to
protest. Some come to get arrested. All have a right to speak out.
Yet, there is no way that a responsible Senator can vote against spending. There is no one line item that says "war, yes or no." That's
not the way the supplemental Appropriations bill works.
So I say to the protesters, know I am on your side, but what are you asking us to vote against? Do you want us to vote against the pay for the Soldiers and for their spouses and for their children? I won't vote 'no' against their benefits. What do you want us to vote against? The bullets and what they need to fight? I won't vote against that. Do you want us to vote against the body armor and the armored Humvees they need
for survival? I won't vote against that. What about if they are injured? One of the things that saves lives are the tourniquets on the battlefield. When they are injured, jet fuel gets the helicopters and the planes from Baghdad to Germany to Walter Reed and Bethesda. We'll
fix Walter Reed. We'll fix Bethesda. But we have to get them there.
I cannot and will not vote against funding. I will not vote to in any way to harm the men and women in the U.S. military, nor will I cut off
the support to their families. And if you want to picket, you want to protest, you want to disrupt my life - better my life is disrupted than the lives of these men and women in uniform. It is time to stop the finger-pointing and it's time to pinpoint a new way forward.
Melissa Schwartz
Communications Director
Office of Senator Barbara Mikulski
(202) 228-1122 (phone)
(202) 224-3892 (fax)
It sounds to me like Sen. Mikulski is getting a bit exasperated with anti-war demonstrators. At least she listens to them. Now, Armando will respond to this by saying that he doesn't want her to vote against this bill, he wants no bill put forward for her to vote on.
Here is my question for Armando. If no bill is put forward, does that not have the exact same effect as failing to pass the bill? Can you list a single concern raised by Sen. Mikulski that goes away if the bill is withheld? No? Well, neither can I.
For those that want to do a full court press to get Congress to not bring up a supplemental, consider the fact that even the brave 23 that voted against this war are not going to do it.
They will not do it.
It's a dumb strategy to ask them to do something that they will not do.
What we need to do is work on the Democrats and Republicans that are resisting putting hard deadlines in the supplemental. This idea that we can prevent any supplemental at all is retarded, and insulting those of us that have realized this is juvenile.
Wishes are not ponies. On the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, I thought we'd realized that by now.
