The Great Derangement - Matt Taibbi [61]
AIRCRAFT COMBAT LOSSES
The conferees have agreed to fund procurement of aircraft to replace combat losses. The conference agreement includes funding for three F/A-18 aircraft to directly replace F/A-18 aircraft lost in combat and to fund a single EA-6B which is a functional replacement for an EA-6B Prowler combat loss.
“Notice anything odd about that?” he asked.
“Since when do Iraqi insurgents shoot down fighter jets?” I asked.
“They don’t,” he said.
“Then what is this?” I asked.
“That’s a good question,” he said. “I’d be interested to hear their answer to that, too.”
The supplemental was full of stuff like this, crammed to the brim with earmarks military and domestic. A friend on the Hill explained his theory on what had happened. “The Democrats needed to hand out that one hundred and twenty-four billion dollars in gifts just to get the votes to pass the timeline. So you hand out some farm stuff, some Katrina stuff, some antidrought stuff, and maybe even some military stuff to various southern and western congressmen who were on the fence about voting for an ‘antiwar’ measure.
“Then they send that timeline to Bush, Bush vetoes it, and now the Democrats have to find a way to save face. So they’ll send it back to Bush without the timeline, or with an ‘advisory’ timeline—but the price is that Bush has to sign off on the hundred and twenty-four billion dollars. Now you’ve got no timeline, and the antiwar vote the Congress was elected to cast isn’t going to be there, but what you do have is one hundred and twenty-four billion dollars in new spending. It’s beautiful. Rather than using the pork to leverage the timeline into law, they’ll use the timeline to leverage the pork into law.”
I called John Murtha’s office to ask about the F/A-18s. His press guy, Matt Mazonkey, came to the phone.
“Matt Mazonkey!” he said cheerfully.
“Hi,” I said. “My name is Matt Taibbi. I’m a reporter for Rolling Stone.”
“Oh, hey, Matt! What’s up?” he said, instantly adopting the buddies-for-life tone you often hear on the Hill from people you’ve never met and who, conversely, have never heard of you. I explained about the planes and asked if he knew the circumstances of those combat losses. I could almost hear him frowning on the other end of the line.
“What’s this story about?” he asked, after a pause.
“The supplemental,” I said unhelpfully. “I just saw this entry, and I was curious.”
“Okay,” he said. “Well, I, uh, don’t know exactly when those planes were lost. But we’ll get back to you, okay?”
“Yeah, okay,” I said.
I called the Pentagon and the navy, even walked into the navy congressional liaison office, and made a series of requests for information about the combat losses. No one seemed to know anything. The last communication I received from the navy read as follows:
Matt,
Wanted to let you know we are tracking this request.
LT Bashon W. Mann
GOLD Team Action Officer
CHINFO News Desk
Nobody ever got back to me about the planes. But the earmarks did end up staying in the final version of the supplemental, while the timeline had to wait for another day.
WHILE ALL of this supplemental stuff was going on, in early April, I went to a breakfast for a small group of reporters in the office of Bernie Sanders, the erstwhile Vermont congressman who in the anti-Bush fervor of the previous season had secured a startling promotion to the Senate. As a congressman Sanders had been a reporter’s dream. A true independent who didn’t rely on party money to win his elections—while Sanders caucused with the Democrats, he was technically an independent who relied upon his great name recognition and reputation in his tiny state—Sanders could be outspoken without fear of consequence. In years past he and his staff had been a great help in explaining the vagaries of Congress, including the ugly inner workings of the various committees. But Bernie was a senator now and he caucused with the majority party, which meant