Feingold Sole Democrat To Vote Against Military Waste
Yesterday morning, the United States Senate voted to approve a shocking 636.3 billion dollars of spending for just one year of military operations. Remember when 87 billion dollars a year seemed outrageous?
Only one Democratic Senator had the guts to vote against this expenditure of American wealth, filled of pork barrel projects to earn members of Congress political points with lobbyists ready to provide campaign contributions in return. That one Democratic member of the U.S. Senate with the integrity to vote against military waste was Russ Feingold.
Senator Feingold explained his vote as follows: “I strongly oppose this fiscally irresponsible and misguided bill. While the bill includes many good provisions, it will also fund a massive troop surge in Afghanistan that will overburden our troops and will likely hurt, not help, our efforts to eliminate the global threat posed by al-Qaida and its affiliates. And it is stuffed with earmarks and wasteful spending, such as $2.5 billion for 10 C-17s that the Defense Department does not want and $130 million for a Presidential helicopter program that has been canceled.”
The next time the Democratic Party is searching for a presidential candidate, it would do well to remember this one U.S. Senator who was willing this year to do more than just talk about fiscal responsibility.
