Miller flip flops on prior vote against war funding

Dear Congressman Miller,

We were so impressed with your vote in the House on May 14 to oppose the $100 billion supplemental war funding bill to continue our endless military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course you and the sixty others who voted against it knew it would easily pass anyway, but it was an important principled stand.

Since then, the Senate passed their version of the bill, tacking on an additional 100 billion in the form of a loan to the IMF (to bail out European banks!), and now the House Republicans are saying they won't vote for the revised House/Senate version of the bill! This means the bill could actually fail!! And the wars could end!!

Unless of course the "House leadership" can convince at least forty of those Democrats who voted no on the first version of the war funding bill to flip their vote and vote yes on the revised bill.

And sadly we watched as you were one of the first of those Democrats to step forward and announce to reporters that you would vote yes on the revised bill. I guess this shouldn't surprise us, since you are actually Chair of the "Congressional Democratic Policy Committee".

But this certainly makes your original vote on May 14 look like an empty gesture, a safe vote for the purpose of political posturing.

NOTE TO READERS: If you don't like American policy of endless war, and George Miller's support for it, call him and tell him!

George Miller's contact form: http://georgemiller.house.gov/contactus/
Phone: 202-225-2095

Miller spins a response to our question about war funding

Congressman Miller responds to our key question about "why doesn't the Congressional Democratic leadership (Pelosi) simply cut off the purse strings by just not offering any more Supplemental Iraq funding bill at all." (Ending the war now was after all the clear mandate of the American voters when the elected a Democratic majority to Congress in 2006.) Cutting the purse stings by not offering a supplemental funding bill would end the war without the game of trying to round up Republican votes on a bill. With the clear message that there would be no supplemental funding extension, the military would have no choice but to begin an orderly withdrawal of troops, using the plentiful funding they still have in the pipeline from previous funding authorizations. Instead, the Democrats keep offering supplemental funding extensions with "strings attached," knowing full well that the strings will be stripped away in negotiations with the Republicans, or vetoed by the President.

Listen to Miller's response and see whether he actually answered our key question (about not offering a supplemental funding bill to vote on at all) or whether he evaded it (quote from Miller: "as you know, we cannot end the war without Republican votes"), while he throws in the false spectre that the decision to not offer another supplemental funding extension would leave our troops with no funding at all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4iFlmIJZNU