By not distancing themselves from the policies and delineating differences, the Democrats have embraced the failed policies of the Bush Administration as if their campaign for change never happened. They are almost assured of going down in history as the most bankrupt Administration and Congress in history up to the present.

It is a pathetic symbol of just how bankrupt the Congressional Democratic leadership is when it comes to U.S. foreign policy that Pelosi, Hoyer et al are trying to use funding for the IMF to convince other Democrats to support war funding. The IMF has been a destabilizing force in many countries across the globe through its austerity measures and structural adjustment schemes. Remember, it was the policies of the IMF and its cohorts at the World Bank and World Trade Organizations that sparked global uprisings in the 1990s.

THANKFULLY, AT least a handful of Democrats seemed to understand the atrocious role the IMF has played and tried (unsuccessfully) to impose rules on the funding that would have confronted the IMF's austerity measures by requiring that "the funds allocated by Congress for global stimulus are used for stimulatory, and not contractionary, purposes."

In urging their colleagues to oppose the war funding and the IMF funding, Kucinich and California's Bob Filner sent a Dear Colleague letter, which stated: "The IMF has a long history of placing economic conditions on countries receiving loans that have actually damaged, rather than stimulated, those economies, and its policies have not changed enough to warrant support." They charged that the IMF funding "would be used to bail out private European banks with U.S. taxpayer money." In addition to the military and IMF funding, the bill also provides $10.4 billion for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and $7.7 billion for "Pandemic Flu Response."

Under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, the Democratic-controlled Congress has been a house of war. Unfortunately, it is not a house where the war is one of noble Democrats fighting for peace, freedom and democracy against the evil, belligerent Republicans as they advocate and implement policies of preemptive war, torture and the violation of civil liberties. Instead, it is a house void of substantive opposition to the ever-expanding war begun under Bush and escalating under Obama.

What repelled the Republicans from a vote to fund the war was hardly a sudden conversion to pacifism (in fact, their position was hypocritical). It was largely when the White House and Congressional Democratic leadership added a provision to the bill that will extend up to $100 billion in credits to the International Monetary Fund. This sent many Republicans to the microphones to denounce the funding as a "global bailout" and will undoubtedly be used as a campaign issue in 2010 to attack the Democrats who voted for the spending bill. For its part, the Democratic leadership, in trying to win Democratic support, portrayed the IMF funding as a progressive policy:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is trying to paint the IMF provision as a "very important national security initiative." The IMF, she said, "can be a force for alleviating the fury of despair among people, poor people throughout the world."

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's office put out a position paper that declared the IMF funding "is key to making us more secure," adding that the money will ensure that the "IMF has the ability to play its central role in resolving and preventing the spread of international economic and financial crises." The paper also provided a litany of comments from prominent Republicans praising the IMF, including from the Bretton Woods Committee (Henry Kissinger, Condoleezza Rice, Henry Paulson, Robert Rubin, James A. Baker, Nicholas F. Brady, Colin Powell, Paul A. Volcker, Paul H. O'Neill, etc.). Also, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Newt Gingrich and, of course, George W. Bush.

If there was a real opposition party in Congress, all of this would have provided yet more reasons to vote against the bill.