Making a tough choice with U.S. troops still in Iraq (news - web sites), the House on Wednesday sided with the chamber's Republican leaders to embrace spending restraint over an expansion of a program to improve family military housing.
In a near party-line 212-211 procedural vote, lawmakers signaled their willingness to remove a $500 million expansion of the housing program from a $10 billion military construction bill for next year.
The housing expansion provision; supported by President Bush (news - web sites), most Democrats and many Republicans; was expected to be formally deleted from the legislation on Thursday.
Hours after the first vote, though, lawmakers underscored the election-year sensitivity of the issue by voting 423-0 for a separate bill doing exactly the opposite; expanding the same family military housing program by $500 million.
The back and forth underscored the GOP's ambivalence about which priority should gain the upper hand, controlling spending or helping the troops during wartime. It also illustrated the party's internal battle between conservatives and moderates, and the balancing act GOP leaders must often perform.
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Ain't nobody on the Right gave a damn about the troops in the first place. Well, maybe McCain. These fucking assholes see our fighting men and women in terms of strength charts, not as human beings who have the needs all other humans have. They can't get the Reservists' pay situation straight and they don't care if military families have a place to live. Fight and die, that's it. What more does the military need? Motherfuckers.
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