CORRECTED VERSION: This story originally said Inslee voted against President Bush’s decision to go to war. He supported the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 but opposed the war in Iraq that started in 2003.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. House on Tuesday evening passed a $59 billion war funding bill that isn’t paid for — and it was Democrats, not Republicans, crying foul against further deficit spending.
The House voted 308 to 114 for the emergency supplemental appropriations for the war in Afghanistan. Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Bainbridge Island, and Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Seattle, were the only House members from Washington state to vote nay.
Both Inslee and McDermott cited the cost of a war that is now nearly a decade old. On the House floor, Inslee said lack of money could force the Lynnwood Police Department to trim a quarter of its employees while Congress is asked to spend $4 billion to train police officers in Kabul.
“It is wrong to be borrowing money from China, laying off American police officers, to train police officers in Afghanistan,” Inslee said.
Inslee supported President Bush’s decision to invade Afghanistan in 2001, but opposed the war in Iraq that started in 2003. Nonetheless,he has voted for deficit spending to pay for the wars, most recenlty in 2009. Inslee said he wanted to give the new Obama administration a chance to start winding down the war — something Inslee said he sees no real indication of happening.
Meanwhile, the rising deficit, the recession and the accumulating years of combat have made it untenable to keep pouring billions of dollars into the war, he said.
“My position has not changed,” Inslee said. “The world has changed.”
As for McDermott, he said he sees no point in spending any more money on a problem that U.S. troops can’t solve.
“If we really want to help the Afghan people form a functioning government that serves its people and respects human rights, we must do it with additional aid and support — not with more troops.”