US President George W. Bush, seeking to gain an advantage over Congress' Democratic majority in a showdown over the Iraq war, suggested yesterday that lawmakers should be ashamed that they added non-war items to an Iraq spending bill.
"I like peanuts as much as the next guy, but I believe the security of our troops should come before the security of our peanut crop," Bush said in his weekly radio address, referring to a provision in the war funding legislation that earmarks US$74 million for secure peanut storage.
The Senate passed a bill calling for most US combat troops to be out of Iraq by March 31 next year while the House version demands a withdrawal for September next year. In both houses, the timelines are attached to legislation providing money to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan this year.
Bush repeated his promise to veto the bills if the timelines stay in -- and if the unrelated earmarks stay in as well -- because they "undercut our troops in the field."
"Each bill would impose restrictive conditions on our military commanders," the president said. "Each bill would also set an arbitrary deadline for surrender and withdrawal in Iraq and I believe that would have disastrous consequences for our safety here at home."
House and Senate negotiators will have to reconcile the different versions and lawmakers left town for a two-week spring break without doing so. Earlier on Friday, the White House, claiming that money for troops is already beginning to run out, complained that the House should have at least named its negotiators before leaving.
But Democrats said that any blame for shorting troops and their families of what they need will fall at Bush's feet if he vetoes a spending bill Congress sends him.
"It's his responsibility," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said.
In the Democrats' weekly radio address, an Iraq war veteran asked Bush to resist the urge to veto the legislation.
"Both houses of Congress have done their jobs and will soon finish a bill that will provide for the troops," retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Horne said yesterday. "When they're done, the only person who could keep funds from reaching troops would be the president."
Horne, who ran unsuccessfully for a Kentucky congressional seat last year, added: "If the president vetoes this bill because he doesn't want to formally demonstrate progress in Iraq, never in the history of war would there be a more blatant example of a commander in chief undermining the troops," he said.
"There is absolutely no excuse for the president to withhold funding for the troops, and if he does exercise a veto, Congress must side with the troops and override it," he added.
In his radio address, Bush took aim at budget blueprints approved recently by the Democratic-led Congress.
The House plan promises a big surplus in five years by allowing tax cuts passed in the president's first term to expire.
It awards spending increases next year to both the Pentagon and domestic programs, but defers difficult decisions about unsustainable growth in federal benefit programs such as Medicare.
The Senate blueprint is similar but would not generate surpluses since it assumes lawmakers will renew the most popular of the tax cuts due to expire at the end of 2010.
Bush equates letting the cuts expire to a tax increase.
He said yesterday the blow would amount to nearly US$400 billion over five years -- what he said would be "the largest tax increase in our nation's history."
"Whether you have a family, work for a living, own a business or are simply struggling to get by on a low income, the Democrats want to raise your taxes," the president said. "With their budgets, the Democrats have revealed their true intentions."
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion