Porky Pig Goes to War

Corrected: 3/21/07, 11:05 a.m.

Boy, as if the troops don't have enough to lug into battle, now they're carrying Porky Pig. Or so that's the message from the Senate Republican Conference, which designed this portrayal of all the pork being larded on the war supplemental spending bill to persuade enough members to also OK a time limit on the effort.

It's part of a broader GOP effort to paint the Democrats as big spenders and taxers and one that has had some success so far. Besides drawing attention to the war pork with the above illustration, the GOP is drawing up state-by-state fact sheets suggesting massive tax hikes for voters if the Democrats don't extend the Bush tax relief.

You'll start hearing this a lot: "It's the largest tax increase in history!" So far, the Senate Republican Conference has drawn up fact sheets for voters in New York, Arizona, and North Dakota. Spokesman Ryan Loskarn suggests an average $2,052 tax increase for a family of four making $40,000 no matter what state they reside in.

Democrats call it all bunk, of course, claiming that the Bush tax cuts were giveaways to the rich and that adding pork to the controversial war spending bill is the only way to win enough votes to limit the time troops will stay in Iraq.