Tomorrow, the House of Representatives is slated to take up a $93.5 billion spending bill that includes $33 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that the Senate passed late last month. The war supplemental has divided the Democratic caucus, with many Democrats uneasy about spending billions more on the war in Afghanistan while they are unable to scrap together the votes to extend unemployment insurance due to a backlash from conservative members claiming it would be too expensive.

In order to allay the concerns of Democrats who feel like they are paying for a war with no end in sight, Rep. Jim McGovern (MA) has authored an amendment, along with Rep. David Obey (D-MI), that would require the President to submit a timeline for the orderly withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Earlier today, Think Progress joined McGovern on a conference call and asked him why his more conservative colleagues see extending unemployment insurance as too expensive but raise no issue with the cost of the war. McGovern said that the unemployed have no lobby in Washington and suggested that if Americans paid more attention to the war, legislators would be less likely to vote for blank checks for the conflict:

TP: I have two questions. One, how much support do you think you’ll have from your caucus and also from the leadership tomorrow for the vote tomorrow on requiring the President to supply a timeline for the drawdown, the second question is why do you think your colleagues are able to easily dismiss additional aid for the unemployed or Medicaid expansions, or extensions rather, and yet are unable to continually vote for funding for the war?

MCGOVERN: We haven’t done the whip count, so we don’t know, we’re hoping for a very strong vote, we’re going to work it like we want to win it. [...] The question about unemployment insurance, the reality is the jobless, those who are unemployed, don’t have a lobby up here. [...] On the war quite frankly, it’s kinda moved to the background. [...] We’re not asked to pay for the war, there’s no war tax, there’s no draft, we’re all just weeding about our business, and even in our newspapers with the exception of the recent General McChrystal flap, the war has moved off the front page. So people just kinda go along to get along and we just keep on going along and not feel the pressure to change anything. Well, part of the reason we want this debate tomorrow and part of the reason we’re doing this call is because we want to increase the pressure on our colleagues is and get people across the country to understand this is a big deal, people are dying over there, we are going bankrupt as a result of this war, we don’t have a clearly defined mission on what we’re doing over there. [...] I think to the extent we can focus the attention on what’s happening over there, the more and more we’ll see people say we need to change this policy.

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Last month, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) introduced a similar amendment to the Senate’s war funding bill that would’ve required the President to submit a timeline for withdrawal to the Congress. It failed 18-80. While President Obama has identified July 2011 as the date when he plans to start bringing troops home from Afghanistan, the administration has sent mixed signals about how many soldiers it will bring home and how long it will take.

Last week, Alejandro Galindo, a Mexican day laborer in Staten Island, was attacked on his way home. Galindo was punched in the face and suffered a fractured eye socket and brain trauma. A couple hours later, an 18-year-old Puerto Rican man was brutally beaten, leaving him in a coma with head trauma and a fractured jaw. Police classified the first incident as a hate crime, but have yet to connect Galindo’s attack to the one that followed. The father of the Puerto Rican victim, who did not want to disclose his name for fear of retribution, is convinced that the attack was racially motivated. If he is right, it will be part of a string of anti-Latino hate crime to occur in the North Shore region of Staten Island in the past couple months.

“A lot of people in Port Richmond, New Brighton, West Brighton, everywhere, it’s Latinos getting hit,” said the father of the latest victim. In early April, 26-year-old Mexican immigrant, Rodolfo Olmedo, was assaulted by four men who beat him with a baseball bat, wooden planks and a metal chain, and yelled anti-Mexican slurs at him. “You’re a f—— Mexican,” the suspects allegedly told Olmedo. “We’re gonna beat you up.” The next Sunday, another Mexican man was attacked with a bat. A third assault in April left a Latino man with a broken arm, and stitches across his forehead. Meanwhile, this past Tuesday, a Staten Island man was arrested for making threatening phone calls to the Rev. Al Sharpton over his opposition to Arizona’s immigration law.

Rep. Michael McMahon (D-NY) has condemned the attacks, stating, “[t]his attack is just the latest in a string of disgraceful violence against members of our community whose only crime is having a different background. It is very upsetting to me that such hateful crimes could occur on the streets of Staten Island.” So far, it appears his opponents in the upcoming election have remained silent on the attacks, but they have chosen to fan the flames of the related immigration debate. Fellow candidate Candidate Michael Allegretti (R) recently said that Arizona is “under siege by illegal aliens.” “We cannot allow people to be a drain on our resources, our schools, our hospitals, and our tax dollars,” stated Allegretti. Congressional candidate Michael Grimm (R) has stated he supports an immigration law that requires “all those detained or questioned by local law enforcement personnel for a specific suspicion of violating local or state laws to be required to produce appropriate identification.” Staten Island Borough President Jim Molinaro, who is not running in the race, slammed Mexican Felipe Calderon’s opposition to the Arizona law, stating “[t]he man should’ve been given a one-way ticket out of the country back to the banana republic where he came from.”

It might seem that the race for New York’s 13th Congressional District has little to do with the string of attacks against Latinos that is plaguing Staten Island, however, several reports over the past few years have indicated that the heated immigration debate has led to a nationwide increase in anti-Latino heat crimes. A report released by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) directly attributed a disturbing environment of “racial intolerance and anti-immigrant hatred” in nearby Suffolk County, NY in part to the fiery anti-immigrant rhetoric of local politicians and law enforcement. Allegretti and Molinaro’s comments probably didn’t motivate the Staten Island attackers, but they do contribute to an environment of fear and hate towards immigrants. Meanwhile, if Grimm’s policy were to go into effect, chances are crimes like these would never be reported in the first place.