Video: Bishop Calls Libya Action Tough Amid Gov't Budget Fights

Rep. Tim Bishop D-Southampton came to the meeting Tuesday morning at the to talk to members about . He began by addressing the recent bombing of Libya.

“Saturday is when the president made the decision to join the international coalition to be involved in Libya," Bishop said.

He mentioned his reservations about the United States’ involvement in the coalition currently enforcing a no-fly zone over that country.

“I am troubled and I am having a hard time differentiating the decision to engage in what is essentially a civil war with the debate that has been taking place over the last several months on Capitol Hill with respect to spending,” Bishop said.

He said he was “comforted that we are a part of a legitimate international coalition” and that President Obama said that no U.S. ground troops would be used in the action, something that he thinks would be a “tragic mistake.”

Bishop said that tied our involvement in the coalition against Libya was “hard to reconciling what we are doing in Libya with what we are doing domestically.”

The cost of the action will be high for the United States in terms of dollars even if it is brief. Biship said that each Tomahawk cruise missile costs $1.2 million and that we have already fired over 100 of them.

“So we have spent already over $100 million,” he said.

He contrasted those costs to the budget problems in the local school districts.

“I just read what’s going on with the William Floyd School district where they have a $9 million budget hole and they are going to lay off 145 teachers and they are going to eliminate interscholastic athletics, music extra curricular activities and so on,” Bishop said. “That’s a tough juxtaposition.”

He thinks that although the U.S. has an obligation to act when we see human suffering but that the situation in Libya is “essentially in my view a civil war.”

The budget bill that passed the House of Representatives is slated to cut $61 Billion out of federal expenditures between now and September 30, according to Bishop. Cuts that will affect the local economy include closing two large pieces of scientific equipment at , laying off a large part of the and cuts to the pre-K education program Head Start.