We’ve been checking in with Dino Rossi’s U.S. Senate campaign to see how he would have voted on some big issues that have come before his opponent, incumbent U.S. Sen. Patty Murray. For example, last month Rossi’s camp told us how Rossi would have voted on a list of abortion rights votes. It added some clarity, but it wasn’t a big surprise: Republican Rossi, a conservative Catholic, is diametrically opposed to Democrat Murray on every abortion vote, landing squarely in the pro-life/anti-choice camp.
Yesterday, we checked in to see how Rossi would have voted on two other controversial matters that have come before Murray in the Senate—the vote for the Iraq war and the vote for the Afghanistan war. (Murray was one of just 23 senators to vote ‘no’ on the Iraq war in October 2002. And she voted ‘yes’ on the unanimous vote to invade Afghanistan in September 2001.)
No big surprises on this one either: Rossi’s campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Morris tells PubliCola that Rossi would have voted for both wars. However, Rossi’s ongoing support for the wars—for example, after the Senate confirmed Gen. David Petraeus as the new commander of forces in Afghanistan, Rossi commended Obama “on his outstanding pick of Gen. David Petraeus to serve as commander …. and to lead a successful counterinsurgency campaign”—raises a series of questions, including a fundamental question about Rossi’s budget priorities.
First, let’s start with the standard follow-up question. Would Rossi have voted for the wars if he knew then what he knows today (no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, quagmire in Afghanistan)? Morris says: “Hypotheticals are interesting, but we’re dealing with a reality where we have men and women in the field who need our support, as well as the equipment and training they need to complete their mission.”
While Morris failed to address the crux of the question (i.e., does Rossi still think the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan make sense), her response anticipated my second follow-up—would Rossi support the legislation that’s currently pending in the Senate—a $37.1 billion emergency appropriation to fund the troops in Afghanistan through October? (It’s something liberal bloggers at the Stranger have also wondered about.)
Morris said that, in principle, yes, Rossi supports spending $37.1 billion on additional troops. (In addition to the emergency money, she also said the wars should be in the regular budget.) And she echoed the current GOP line: The emergency troop money shouldn’t be tied to other things, like an additional $10 billion for teachers proposed by House Democrats as part of the legislation.
“Emergency money for the troops should be emergency money for the troops,” she said. (Senate Republicans are currently trying to remove the $10 billion for teachers from the bill.)
Even if the Republicans manage to eliminate the funding for teachers, there is another issue that you’d think would be a deal breaker for them: The troop allocation violates “PayGo,” meaning “Pay as you go,” a budgeting tenet pushed by fiscal conservatives.
Simply, “PayGo” means when Congress authorizes an expenditure, they have to say how they’re going to pay for it. But the $37.1 billion emergency money for Afghanistan doesn’t identify a funding source. That’s why it’s called an “emergency” funding bill. By classifying certain expenditures as “emergencies,” Congress is allowed to add things to the budget—and add to the federal budget deficit—without finding corresponding cuts. (This is the way Bush funded the wars—a trillion-dollar spend that has led to a $500 billion deficit.)
And that brings us to the fundamental question about Rossi’s budget priorities. While Rossi supports classifying money for the troops in Afghanistan as emergency spending (thereby adding $37.1 billion to the deficit), he does not support another emergency expenditure currently being considered by the Senate–emergency unemployment benefits for workers who are struggling through long-term unemployment. Why? Because he thinks it will add to the deficit.
As a candidate, Rossi recently opposed the Democrats’ emergency $33 billion allocation to extend unemployment insurance because, according to a Rossi press release titled “Murray Should Sponsor Fully-Paid-For Extension of Unemployment Insurance,” it didn’t meet “PayGo” standards (something Murray voted for as budgeting guideline in January.) “Extending unemployment benefits can be done in a responsible way which doesn’t increase the deficit by $33 billion,” Rossi said in the release.
So, deficit spending is wrong when it comes to dealing with the recession at home, but it’s okay when it comes to fighting the war in Afghanistan?
“This is a case where you’re trying to fund the troops in the field. It should be funded. There are certain things that do qualify as an emergency for emergency funding,” Morris said.
Doesn’t unemployment insurance qualify? Indeed, for nearly 60 years—because the government views recessionary unemployment as an emergency—Congress has never let unemployment benefits expire when the national rate has climbed anywhere above 7.2 percent. With the unemployment rate currently at 9.7 percent, there are more than 1.2 million people who’ve been out of work for more than six months and have not yet received an unemployment check. (It’ll be two million by the time Congress returns from summer break.)
“There is no debate that the unemployment rate is too high,” Morris said. “Dino has been very clear on that, and that Congress should extend unemployment insurance in a fiscally responsible way which doesn’t add to the debt … Adding to the debt and growing the government aren’t going to lower unemployment.”
Morris acknowledged that unemployment insurance extensions have always been passed as emergency bills, but says she sees that as a problem. “Yes, they’ve done it that way forever. And look where it’s gotten us—9.1 percent unemployment in Washington State and a national debt topping $13 trillion.”
In his press release, Rossi suggested going with a proposal by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) to free up an estimated $34.6 billion by “enacting the administration’s proposed 5 percent cut on government spending, eliminating nonessential government travel, and a temporary freeze on federal employee salaries.
The Democrats stuck with the emergency unemployment insurance bill, and the GOP killed it late last month. Murray supported the bill.
“This bill includes an extension of unemployment insurance,” Murray said in her floor speech, “which in my home state hundreds of thousands of individuals rely on to buy groceries, pay a mortgage, or help pay for school. For years these benefits have been routinely extended in tough times—and times have rarely been tougher than they are now.”
