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 [Bush] wants what they [the White House] 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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The 2005 emergency war-spending bill included $70 million for aid to Ukraine and other former Soviet states; $12.3 million for the Architect of the Capitol, in part to build an off-site delivery facility for the Capitol police; $24 million for the Forest Service to repair flood and landslide damage; and $104 million for watershed protection -- the lion's share meant for repairing the damage to waterways in Washington County, Utah, at the request of the state's Republican senators.

Additionally, O'Donnell uncritically reported, "[T]his is now day 73, which is a device that the White House is using, saying that it's been that long since the president has asked Congress to fund the war, and there's been no action." However, as Media Matters previously noted, the weblog Think Progress has documented that in 2006, with Republicans in control of Congress, it took 119 days for Congress to pass a supplemental funding bill after Bush requested it, and in 2005 (with Republicans also in control), it took 86 days to pass such a bill.

From O'Donnell's report during the 8 a.m. ET hour of the April 19 MSNBC Live:

DAVID GREGORY (host): Hey, Kelly, what's going on at the White House today? Because I know the president is on the road, and he's going to be talking about Iraq today.

O'DONNELL: Well, we hope, we'll keep the tone civil here as best we can, David.

GREGORY: Yeah.

O'DONNELL: A number of things are sort of moving through the White House today. The president is really getting back to some of the more bare-knuckle politics of trying to struggle with Congress over how to get funding for the war. He'll be the visiting Ohio in the Dayton area, he'll be talking about the war on terror, as he likes to term it, and talking about, this is now day 73 -- which is a device that the White House is using, saying that it's been that long since the president has asked Congress to fund the war, and there's been no action. So, that's part of what we're seeing.

And of course, [Attorney General] Alberto Gonzales will be before the Senate today. That's something that has a big reflection on the White House, raising credibility issues, raising questions about can he save his job as some people have said that his neck is on the line. So that's happening.

We've also heard from some of the members of the House and the Senate after that leadership meeting yesterday. Trying to get a gauge on where is this with the war supplemental. Everybody was talking about it being a friendly meeting, a productive meeting, but when reporters asked, did anything change? The House minority leader [John Boehner (R-OH)] said no. And we all were sort of surprised by that brief moment of candor. We didn't quite expect that. And they're really talking now about expecting a bill to go to the president next week that he would likely veto, and then they get back together again and try to sort something out.

[House Majority Leader] Nancy Pelosi [D-CA] seemed to indicate she is willing to work with the president. The White House has been careful to say, "We don't want to negotiate." He wants what they term a clean bill, meaning no timetables, and no extra spending for things that don't deal with the war. So, this is gonna keep going. A lot of the lawmakers acknowledge, yes, there's an urgency, that's something the White House is saying as well about making sure that money keeps going through the system to keep the current war plan that the president is behind, moving.