OBAMA - MOST IMPORTANT CONGRESSIONAL WORK

U.S. Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) introduced in 2005 a bill that deals with NOT one nuclear weapon. Here are the guts of Obama’s most important work in the Senate.

Materials of Mass Destruction.---The Committee supports sections 10-12 of Public Law 109-472 which strengthens U.S. efforts to interdict illicit shipments of weapons or materials of mass destruction and secure vulnerable stockpiles of conventional weapons. The Committee provides $48,059,000 to implement these programs, of which $10,000,000 is under Export Control and Related Border Security Assistance, $36,059,000 is under the Small Arms and Light Weapons Destruction program, and $2,000,000 is under the Nonproliferation and Disarmament Fund.

As noted above they introduced this in mid 2005. The senate jumped all over as it was tossed it into a voice vote near the Xmas vacation date came for congress in December of 2006. Then it took six months more to get the Appropriations Committee to release the funds.

While this is a noteworthy thing that Lugar and Obama did one has to figure out it was not the most important work of that year, month, or week of congress. I will concede it could have been on that given day. That is provided it was a slow day in congress!!

By the way Obama was able to wrangle over 200 million dollars for the Chicago Transit Authority from congress in less then a year. I think it is called an “earmark”

Below is a link to both Lugar and Obama’s press release relating to this bill….

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=388x3353