Here's the lesson I want Rahm Emmanuel and Timothy Geithner to learn. To paraphrase another President from Illinois: you can piss on all of the progressive Democrats some of the time, and some of the progressive Democrats all of the time, but you cannot piss on all of the progressive Democrats, all of the time.
What makes the present situation particularly outrageous is this: the White House and the House leadership now want progressive Democrats in the House to abandon their constituents, their commitments, and their principles and vote for the War/IMF supplemental. But when progressive Democrats tried to have input into the process earlier, they were locked out by the leadership, on orders from the White House and Treasury.
Representative Jim McGovern tried to introduce an amendment on the war supplemental requiring the Pentagon to submit to Congress an exit strategy from Afghanistan. But McGovern's amendment was not even allowed to be considered. As a freestanding bill [H.R.2404], McGovern's amendment has 85 Democratic and Republican co-sponsors.
Representative Maxine Waters and forty other Democrats presented a package of commonsense reforms to U.S. policy at the International Monetary Fund. But they were not allowed by the House leadership to offer any amendments -- that was the whole point of sneaking $108 billion for the IMF into the Senate version of the supplemental -- to evade normal legislative process in the House.
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White House Tries to Strong Arm Progressive Democrats - We Can't Let That Happen
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The White House wants progressive House Democrats to abandon their constituents and their principles and vote for the War/IMF supplemental.
By Robert Naiman
AlterNet, June 15, 2009
Straight to the Source
