With sincere apologies to the ghost of Mr Rogers for appropriating his song lyric... a request for a few billion bucks, even to a Congress used to randomly flinging money at things, might cause a twinge or two, wouldn't you think? So wouldn't you want to know about the request before you actually made it?
The Bush administration asked Congress Wednesday for an additional $25 billion for U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, congressional Republicans said, a retreat from the White House's earlier plans not to seek such money until after the November elections. [...] But as recently as Monday, a senior administration official downplayed the need for money right now for U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. [...] So far, Bush "has not been told that there is a resource problem,'' said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Excuse me, but ...
"Hasn't been told"? They delivered a request to Congress for increased funds for Iraq and Afghanistan, after the administration had been saying, "no, no, we don't need extra money right now," after what is already a truly disastrous public-relations week between the president, the Congress, the people and just about anyone you can think of ... after all that, they delivered this request to Congress so that he could find out in the news? What sort of brain-dead management is that?
(We'll just leave aside the concept that the request for these Extremely Big Policy Things probably ought to originate in the Oval Office itself, shall we? Let's shall.)
Really, you just wonder what on earth could possibly be going on in that administration sometimes. It's not all that odd for the right hand not to know what the left is doing -- a government is a large, sprawling, massive thing, after all -- but when it comes to publicly delivering $25 billion requests to Congress, you might ought to inform a few people before you do that.
(One wonders if perhaps the reason they didn't inform Our Glorious Leader first is because he'd have blocked the request. After all, soaring budget deficits and a $5 billion per month occupation make nobody happy.)
Posted by iain at May 05, 2004 05:10 PM
