Check out the Roll Call on the supplemental funds for Iraq and Afghanistan (and other purposes). I don’t have the time right now to calculate percentages, but it looks like the vast majority of the Black and Hispanic Congressional caucuses voted against any more funding for the wars. So did twelve Republicans (although some of them might have been objecting to calling the bill ’emergency supplemental appropriations for disaster relief and summer jobs for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2010, and for other purposes’). I know I was not confused (unlike in my last post).
I would have reluctantly voted for this bill, but I respect those who did not. I would have voted for it because there’s a plan in place and it needs some time to see if it can work. But I don’t like passing these bills as emergency supplementals (we were supposed to stop doing that) and I don’t believe in the plan. I think the plan will fail. I think we’re wasting money. So, it would be a very painful ‘yes’ vote for me, and I’d expect to see some kind of miracle occur or I would not be voting ‘yes’ again next year. Among Democrats, 148 voted ‘yes’ and 102′ voted ‘no.’ I am more in political agreement on almost every issue with those who voted ‘no’ on this bill. But I’d cast my votes as if they were decisive and not to make statements from the safety of knowing that the bill will pass anyway. I do not want to see the troops left in the field without funding, nor the president left to hang out to dry before his policy has a chance to prove itself. So, he’d get that chance from me this year, but not next year if things don’t improve dramatically. My best judgment is that we cannot succeed, even minimally, in Afghanistan. The president has our money now, so let him prove me wrong.