MSNBC's Kelly O'Donnell doesn't not mention pork in prior GOP war funding bills

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http://mediamatters.org/items/200704190004

Citing Bush attack on Dems, MSNBC's Kelly O'Donnell did not mention pork in prior GOP war funding bills

In an April 19 report on MSNBC Live regarding a meeting the previous day between congressional leaders and President Bush to discuss an emergency war supplemental spending bill, NBC News White House correspondent Kelly O'Donnell uncritically reported, "He wants what they term a 'clean bill,' meaning no timetables, and no extra spending for things that don't deal with the war." During an April 3 press conference, Bush called for a "clean bill that funds our troops on the front lines." However, O'Donnell made no mention of the fact that, as Media Matters for America has noted, every previous supplemental war funding bill contained money for unrelated projects. Indeed, in previous years, the Republican-led Congress, in some cases acting at the behest of the White House, added funding for "pet spending projects," as an April 4 Washington Post article reported:

To President Bush, they are "pork-barrel projects completely unrelated to the war," items in the House and Senate war-spending bills such as peanut storage facilities and aid to spinach farmers that insult the seriousness of the conflict and exist only to buy votes.

But such spending has been part of Iraq funding bills since the war began, sometimes inserted by the president himself, sometimes added by lawmakers with bipartisan aplomb. A few of the items may have weighed on the votes for spending bills that have now topped half a trillion dollars, but, in almost all cases over the past four years, special-interest funding provisions have been the fruits of congressional opportunism by well-placed senators or House members grabbing what they could for their constituents on the one bill that had to be passed quickly.

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The president's own request last year for emergency war spending included $20 billion for Gulf Coast hurricane recovery, $2.3 billion for bird flu preparations, and $2 billion to fortify the border with Mexico and pay for his effort to send National Guardsmen to the southern frontier.

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