Editorial: War bill shouldn’t be loaded up

Opinion: The Free Press, Mankato, Minn.

It appears Democratic Party leadership in the U.S. Senate is up to political hijinks again, loading all kinds of unrelated spending into a war funding bill.

Average Americans have come to accept this as business but usual, but it still doesn’t make it right. The Associated Press reported Tuesday that the Senate began debate on President Bush’s war funding bill with a “grab bag of domestic programs” including heating aid, immigrant farm worker permits, and unemployment benefits.

These programs, along with new funding for the GI Bill, may have their merits on their own, but they shouldn’t be included in a bill to fund critical war needs in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid said he wants to set up two separate votes, one on non-war funding provisions and then one on war funding itself. This mainly serves the political purposes of his caucus in an election year but doesn’t serve very well the interests of the taxpayers, or soldiers for that matter.