Redstate

Democrats Dither While Colombia Burns

By Mark I Posted in Colombia | Democrats | Free Trade | Hugo Chavez | Liberals — Comments (10) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Jeff Emanuel detailed the $18 billion tax increase on oil companies that the Democratic-controlled House pushed through early last week. Buried in that bill was a little publicized gift to Venezuelan dictator, international pariah, and Bush basher extraordinaire, Hugo Chavez. Chavez’s Citgo, which he regularly uses like a personal PR firm with its offers of cheap heating oil to economically underprivileged communities, “From the people of Venezuela,” was exempted from the tax increase imposed on the other major oil companies because it does not get its oil from within the United States. All of Citgo’s supply is furnished by Venezuela’s state-owned oil company.

Meanwhile, Chavez is menacing Colombia over that country’s pursuit of Marxist rebels into neighboring Ecuador. Chavez has massed troops on the border, closed commerce between the two countries, except for perishables, and has called Colombia, “the Israel of Latin America,” among other less attention-grabbing insults. Colombia is an ally of the United States in both the war on terror and the war on drugs; and has been fighting on both fronts simultaneously in its battle with the narco-terrorist rebel group FARC. It was a FARC leader that Colombian forces killed at his camp inside Ecuador, the very same one to whom Chavez had recently pledged $300 million in aid, according to evidence found on the dead terrorist’s computer, the Colombian government has announced.

Where might Hugo Chavez get that kind of money to lavish on terrorist groups in neighboring democratic countries? From Venezuela’s vast oil wealth, perhaps? The same oil wealth that the Democratic Congress just voted to protect by exempting Citgo, the Venezuelan-supplied oil company, from a tax increase imposed on oil companies operating in America? Surely that can’t be.

Oh, it can and more. At the same time Democrats are tossing bouquets in the form of tax exemptions at Chavez, they are blocking Colombia from receiving valuable economic benefits by refusing to discuss let alone pass the Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

Read on…

Today’s Wall Street Journal reports (sub. req.) that Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) both warned the White House not to even send the Colombia FTA up to Capitol Hill without the acquiescence of the Democratic leadership. Rangel offered the following helpful explanation of the Democrats’ position.

"[T]hey don't have the votes for it, it's not going to come on the floor. [W]hat they [the White House] don't understand it's not the facts on the ground, it's the politics that's in the air." (my emphasis)

So, in other words, Rangel supports Colombia, he really does; but the voters are spooked about free trade agreements right now and gosh it’s just so difficult for Democrats to act on principle when there’s an election afoot. Of course, Rangel, Baucus, and the Democratic leadership in Congress are far more concerned with appeasing their union and anti-trade left wing base than they are with helping an important ally. And they don’t care which dictators they have to climb in bed with to do it.