Senator Arlen Specter has found a real emergency:
Before taking up the $87 billion war package this month, Congress passed and President Bush signed a spending bill that contained $1.9 billion in emergency funding. Fiscal conservatives would hope that such emergency money would be set aside before the rainy day, but we're at war and they are legitimate expenses the president was asking Congress to fund.In Texas and Cape Canaveral, NASA and other federal agencies were stretched to the limit in investigating the causes of the Columbia space-shuttle disaster. In Arizona and much of the West, firefighters and park rangers were crying for needed help in fighting the fires that were destroying homes and causing floods there.
In Pennsylvania, though, there was a different sort of emergency. The danger signs could be seen on the cover of National Review and the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal. It could be seen in a rising enthusiasm among grassroots conservatives.
It had become clear that Senator Arlen Specter's (R., Pa.) job was in danger, and that he was at the mercy of Pennsylvania Republicans who actually wanted to nominate a real conservative — Congressman Pat Toomey.
In fear that tropical storm Toomey might develop into a hurricane, Sen. Specter, using his high perch on the Appropriations Committee, and casting aside the agonizing about deficits he had displayed whenever faced with tax cuts, shipped some pork back home.
Hardly surprising I know, but annoying none the less. Just how many times have we paid for someone's "My poll numbers are slipping," emergency? More than I want to know.
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