WE ARE IN DISTRESS

Congress is now preparing to vote in the next few days on Bush's request for $93 billion more for Iraq occupation for fiscal year 2007. It will pass and the Democrats are saying, instead of cutting the request, that they want to raise it by $5 billion.

But what is even more mind blowing to me is that at this very same time Congress is also starting to work on the fiscal year 2008 Iraq occupation request. Bush is requesting $142 billion for 2008. North Dakota Democrat, Sen. Kent Conrad who is the Senate Budget Committee Chairman, just said that "Our caucus feels strongly that we should go with the president's numbers" on 2008 war costs. "We are going to provide actually more funding, because we think the president's budget has understated the war costs over the five-year period," Conrad told the media.

Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) told reporters that cutting the Iraq occupation funding was "nothing that any of us are considering."

"There's a fine line that I hope will not be blurred between micromanaging the war and assuring accountability," said Rep. Stephanie Herseth (D-South Dakota). "I don't think we should be overreacting to public opinion polls."

Reading this really burns me up. The Democrats are actually getting worse as time drags on. Hard as it is to believe that they could get worse, they are now doing Bush's bidding for him. And they are basically saying, hey let's not get too wrapped up listening to the public!

All of this comes at the very time that new statistics are showing major growth in the numbers of American people moving into deep poverty.

Any anti-poverty, human services organizations, worth their weight in salt should be screaming about this utter waste of our tax dollars on the occupation of Iraq. Where are those voices today?