One point I think needs to be made. This isn't about Joe Lieberman maintaining membership in a country club as a matter of feel-good "bipartisanship." There's actually a job that needs doing here, and when Chris Dodd and Evan Bayh say that they want Lieberman to retain his chairmanship, they are saying that the extraordinary waste, graft, greed and cronyism that have built the Department of Homeland Security to a bloated, ineffectual taxpayer-funded behemoth under Joe Lieberman is just fine.
No-bid contracts kept from public scrutiny in the name of "national security" have built a department of unprecedented waste and theft, all rubber stamped and protected from Senate investigation by Joe Lieberman's chairmanship. And what has it gotten us? Nothing. Basically, the Department of Homeland Security became just another front for the military industrial complex to feed off American taxpayers while neocons like Lieberman screamed "terror terror terror, just trust us."
The FY 2009 budget request for the Department of Homeland Security is $50.5 billion, a 6.8% increase over 2008.
What Bayh and Dodd are saying is that they like Joe so much that this is a small price to pay, that the status quo is just fine and that there is no real need for change.
I wonder if taxpayers agree that $50.5 billion is chump change so long everyone can still sing kumbaya on the Senate floor?
Good for Schumer and Durbin for putting public stewardship over old-boy clubbiness and saying "no."
Make it so, Senators. Any reason you can come up with is fine with me, so much the better if it's for Repug-style incompetence and cronyism.
Update:
More from Jane. She is really on the case!
Traitor Joe: A Few Things Democratic Senators Should Keep In Mind
Go read. I'm not sure Trader Joe's will be exactly thrilled with her play on words! Heh.
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