I forgot to file this yesterday, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did discuss at her press conference two ideas which have been generating discussion on Capitol Hill recently. On the war surtax favored by Rep. David Obey (D-WI), Pelosi basically torpedoed the idea. She said “that is his idea, he is speaking for himself,” and [...]

Obama whiffed in his only reference to the cost of the escalation in Afghanistan, reciting a line with approximately no content. Going forward, I am committed to addressing these costs openly and honestly. Our new approach in Afghanistan is likely to cost us roughly $30 billion for the military this year, and I’ll work closely [...]

This almost has to be a joke. In lieu of a “war tax” to pay for a troop increase in Afghanistan, Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson (NE) is proposing war bonds. “We didn’t have a war tax in the second World War,” Nelson said, and instead the government sold Americans bonds.”People invested in their country, in [...]

I’ve been trying to monitor some reactions from members of Congress and partisans on both sides of the aisle to gauge how President Obama’s “escalate so we can leave” strategy will go over. The responses are kind of interesting: • Jack Murtha spoke for many Democrats in expressing “nervousness” about the escalation and the strategy [...]

In a couple days, the President will convene a jobs summit, amidst pervasive calls to deal with the budget deficit during a recession. Sadly, both the issue of jobs and the deficit are being dealt with in Congress through conservative frames, with policies like across-the-board, untargeted tax cuts for job creation, or “entitlement reform” commissions [...]

Evan Bayh has been going around, throwing cold water on the idea of a war surtax for Afghanistan, even while presenting himself as a fiscal conservative who thinks we must come up with a way to reduce the federal budget deficit. This is a harbinger for what these politicians mean when they say “reduce the [...]

A war surtax would really give Republicans trouble, in addition to being the right policy, to show the real cost of war, instead of living in this fantasy world where our actions abroad have no effect on our actions at home. But Democratic threats have been proven to be so idle over the years that nobody accords them a smidgen of respect. And thus we have a failure to govern.

With days before the President will announce his Afghanistan strategy to the nation, a Democrat considered one of the best chances to pick up a seat in the House of Representatives criticized the proposed escalation and characterized it as “more reflective of Bush policy.” Bill Hedrick, who came within 2 points of defeating Rep. Ken [...]

With the open secret that President Obama will escalate in Afghanistan with anywhere between 25,000 and 34,000 additional troops, foes of the policy are zeroing in on the cost of the operation, adding that to their normal arguments against the war. Nancy Pelosi articulated this on a conference call yesterday, saying that, in a time [...]

President Obama held a final war council meeting before the holidays last night, and it looked from the timing that it could be decisive. After the meeting, Robert Gibbs released a statement saying “After completing a rigorous final meeting, President Obama has the information he wants and needs to make his decision and he will [...]

The big story over in Afghanistan is that US special forces have begun to fund Afghan militia in a similar fashion to the Anbar Awakening, offering local resistance to the Taliban. The last time this country funded a local fighting force in Afghanistan they created the structure for Osama bin Laden to flourish, incidentally. In [...]