- Dino Rossi: Will pose next to veterans, but won't answer a simple war funding question.
Republican Senate candidate Dino Rossi won't say whether he'd have voted to launch and fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
That might seem an odd issue for a Republican to be silent on, but it starts to seem a bit less odd when you consider the likely reason why: Rossi doesn't want to be caught in a trap he's set for himself.
He's recently been campaigning against an emergency allocation of $33 billion to help unemployed Americans keep their unemployment benefits.
But, if Rossi would answer the war funding question, it would probably become clear that while he's opposed to an "emergency" $33 billion for the unemployed because the spending wouldn't come with offsets to make it deficit neutral, he's been in favor of war spending that for years has been done on an "emergency" basis (which means: no offsets to make it deficit neutral). That war spending now totals over $1 trillion and continues to add to the deficit every day. In other words, Rossi's position would be: Yes on foreign wars being an emergency, no on unemployed Americans being an emergency.
But that's just an assumption, since Rossi won't say where he is on the wars and their funding. So, as part of my continuing effort to get Rossi to answer the question, I'm now offering a bounty. I can't offer $1 trillion, or even $33 billion. But this I can do: I'm offering $33 to anyone, whether professional journalist or amateur question-asker, who can get Dino Rossi on the record answering the following query:
If you'd been a U.S. Senator in the years since 2001, would you have voted for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and would you have matched Democrat Patty Murray's record in voting to support their continued funding?
Go forth and ask! Record Rossi's answer in some manner that allows it to be shared and verified as authentic! "No comment" doesn't count! And remember: $33 awaits if you succeed!
