Via Washington Post:

The Senate today defied a White House veto threat and narrowly approved a $122 billion war spending bill that calls for combat troops to begin withdrawing from Iraq this summer.

The 51-47 vote fell mostly along party lines, with two Republicans — Sens. Chuck Hagel (Neb.) and Gordon Smith (Ore.) — joining Democrats in support of the package, which would fund U.S. military activity in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Democrats also attached language that would start troop withdrawals within 120 days of passage, with a March 31, 2008, goal for completing combat operations in Iraq. Some troops could remain in Iraq after that deadline in order to conduct counterterrorism training and security operations.

President Bush has made it very clear that any funding bill that has a timeline in it will be vetoed, and both the House and Senate versions have timelines in them. What this means is that it will take a while for the funding packages to get approved between the two houses, then Bush will veto the resulting bill, which will then lead to further delays in the funding process. As if that weren’t bad enough, Victory Caucus points out that the funding bill isn’t even on the emergency calendar. As has also been widely reported, both the House version and the Senate version are full of plenty of pork to help bribe just enough people to actually get a majority on this, including:

HOUSE
—–
- The effects of Hurricane Katrina on shrimp populations
- Asbesos abatement at the Capitol power plant
- A minimum wage increase
- Peanut storage
… among other things.

SENATE
——
- Sugar beet disaster abatement
- Insect infestation damage reimbursements
- Livestock production losses
… among other things.

Of course, none of these things have anything at all to do with the war or funding thereof and, better yet, none of it is going to get past Bush’s desk since he refuses to sign any funding bill that contains a withdrawal date or provision.

So, what happens now?

- The House and Senate will spend some time after spring break ironing out a unified bill to hand to President Bush.
- President Bush will undoubtedly repeal the bill.
- The House and Senate will posture about how Bush is preventing them from funding the troops, even though they’re the ones that wrote a bill that Bush made abundantly clear will never get past his desk (oh wait, they’re doing that already). Meanwhile, Bush will continue to posture similarly against them.
- Eventually, someone will give.

The only question is… who? Personally, I suspect that, considering the amount of pork they had to throw into their bills to get them off of their own desks, I somehow doubt they’re in anywhere near as strong of a position as they’d like to be on this. Consequently, I suspect this is more symbolic than anything else and is simply meant to appease the Democratic base so they can say, “Well, Bush is still evil and we still can’t defeat him,” or something to that effect.

In the end, though, it’s the troops that’ll suffer.

According to the Toronto Daily News:

President Bush arrived in Brazil last night, greeted by about 6,000 environmentalist protesters, to finalize an agreement today with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to try to expand ethanol production and use in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Naturally, the farm lobbies are upset:

Tom Buis, president of the National Farmers Union, which represents smaller U.S. farm interests, warned that Bush’s proposal would redirect resources that could be used to feed a nascent boom in ethanol production at home.

“This agreement is the wrong step in the wrong direction at the wrong time,” he added.

Interestingly, that same article also points out:

Growing production of ethanol, which in the United States is made mostly from corn, has shaken up U.S. agriculture, driving up corn prices and squeezing other crops like soybeans.

It has also prompted cries from livestock owners who are paying more for cattle feed.

I personally believe that subsidizing ethanol production in the United States, especially of the corn-based variety, is nothing more than pork designed to line the pockets of Midwestern voters and agribusiness interests. R-Squared has a good article that mirrors an article from Popular Mechanics from May 2006 - the gist of both articles is that corn ethanol, if it’s a net energy gain at all, is a small enough one that it would take more corn than we can grow right now to make a serious dent in our oil dependence. Furthermore, there are other, better sources of ethanol (sugar beets, sugarcane, sorghum) that don’t immediately impact the cost of staples like meat and corn tortillas.

In short, I think that energy policy is far too important to use as an excuse to line the pockets of large agribusiness so they can provide the most wasteful method of production possible. It also is too important to use as an excuse to engage in protectionist posturing while we embrace this failed idea that national self-reliance is a good thing. Real energy independence is getting our energy from a variety of sources, both internal and domestic, and varying out in as many directions as practically possible, so that market movement in one sector or country doesn’t dictate our energy supply.

Via Instapundit, I came across this gem:

Nagin’s legal looting: Mayor Nagin filed a $77 billion lawsuit against the US Army Corps of engineers for the levees breaking in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, The Guardian newspaper reported.

That works out to $158,869.67 for every one of the 484,674 people who lived in New Orleans as of the 2000 Census.

There are a couple of issues at work here:

1. Our wonderful legal system, which gives no serious penalties for frivolous lawsuits.
2. A system of pork that encourages largess from the federal dole at the expense of the American taxpayer.

I’ll begin by acknowledging that there are moments when large settlements are necessary. Some companies have legitimately believed that legal action against those they harm are a “cost of doing business” - in those cases, it’s vitally important that a system of legal protections are in place that allow people to redress against such companies and provide significant penalties to avoid the “cost of doing business” school of thought. This is why I’m against artificial judgment limits or federally mandated caps. However, there has to be some penalties against those that feel our legal system is a lottery and clog our courts with frivolous suits. That’s why I do favor a loser-pays system, a proven system deployed widely throughout the world, as well as in some states in the US.

Like any good politician, I also don’t like pork. However, I don’t view pork as “any project that disagrees with my goals” since, as far as I’m concerned, part of what breeds corruption in Washington is that there is money to spend to begin with. I do believe we’ll need to keep taxes relatively high to pay off our obscene national debt but, past that, the federal government should not be in the business of providing much in the way of services. Unfortunately, the federal government has done a wonderful job of hooking people on various services, with their inherent bureaucratic inefficiencies, so I do realize that we cannot just abolish all services and call it good - they are there to meet a perceived need, so we must be ready to provide better alternatives in order to sell the American people on the value of freedom.