Climate war veterans will remember that President Obama promised at the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference to contribute to a $100 billion fund for third-world kleptocracies. Soon after, though, Secretary Clinton backed away from the promise because of budget concerns.
Now Climatewire reports that Clinton has since found a work-around:
In a quest to protect the 1 percent of the U.S. budget that goes toward foreign aid — and the smaller slice devoted to helping vulnerable countries prepare for a warming world — the Obama administration and poverty alleviation groups have long sought to classify development dollars as defense spending.
The rationale, advocated by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, was that strengthening vulnerable countries is as central to national security as fighter jets and smart bombs. But strategy was also at play. Lumping foreign aid in with the sacred cow of defense spending, many advocates reasoned, would protect already scarce resources at a time of shrinking budgets.
But the game is not over yet, according to Climatewire:
Foreign aid made it into the defense pot. Instead of cheering, environmental activists now say they are worried. Defense spending — which now includes budgets for the State Department as well as the Pentagon, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Homeland Security — is capped under the deal at $684 billion for fiscal 2012. So far, according to proposals in the House, the wish list is about $10 billion above that cap.
“Here’s the rub,” said Andrew Deutz, the Nature Conservancy’s director of international government relations. “Someone’s got to go through that budget in the House and cut $10 billion. The fear is that further cuts will come from the foreign aid budget in order to protect the defense spending.”
Meanwhile, if a deal can’t be reached or the debt “supercommittee” tasked with proposing at least $1.5 trillion in additional overall budget cuts fails, additional spending cuts will automatically kick in across the board — including an additional $500 billion in defense cuts.
Will the GOP get fooled again?
Those GOPers sure are easy to fool.
You’d almost think they were really stupid or maybe really, really sneaky. I don’t believe for a minute Mr. Speaker was fooled. Nor most of the members. Just like the The House didn’t know what was in the health care bill we had to pass to find out what was in it.
Note:
Nothing was in that bill that didn’t come from some committee chaired by the GOP.
Everybody’s just protecting their own interest and “screw the people”.
The Hillary and liberal, progressive lie:
“The rationale, advocated by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, was that strengthening vulnerable countries is as central to national security as fighter jets and smart bombs.”
You do not strengthen anyone by given them a handout for any reason. You weaken them.
They spend defense dollars on this sort of tripe and then scream that we must cut the defense budget!!
The only time to bribe the neighbors to be nice is when you have money left over after paying your own bills. We aren’t there.
It is the simplest thing in the world to fool a GOPer.
GOP —> Charlie Brown
Lucy —> Dhimmeroids
football —> [fill in the blank]
some assembly required
Why do you think the rinos were fooled?