Let’s also keep in mind that it’s unclear exactly how many troops this bill would require Bush to bring home. It still allows troops to remain in Iraq to 1) Protect American interests, 2) Train the ISF, and 3) Fight al-Qaeda. Those are loose enough that Bush could say we need all or most of the troops to do that. Text of the bill here. Note that it requires Bush to submit a plan, but there are no troop level numbers in the bill itself.
As a Democrat I’m mightily pleased. The Republicans have their nuts in a vice over this one. Polls show that the American people hate this war and hate Bush. The Republicans in Congress can either continue to support the President and prolong the war, setting themselves up for a bloodbash in the 2008 elections. Or they can join the Democrats in forcing a bipartisan withdrawal, which gets us out of Iraq quicker and destroys the “stab in the back” talking point that the far right is already kicking around.
Personally I hope the Congressional Republicans see the writing on the wall and throw Bush under the bus. But if we have to wait until 2008, thems the breaks. Democratic control of the Presidency and both houses of Congress will make it a lot easier to pass national heathcare.
[Spock]I would estimate that would increase the odds of passing national healthcare from .001% to .01%, Captain.[/Spock]
I said only that the president cannot constitutionally ignore Congress, and he can’t. Overriding a veto is not Congress’ only possible response; it controls all funding, and the very existence, organization and prescribed duties and powers of all executive offices and agencies. Saying “Congress has no oversight” WRT anything in the executive branch is an egregious misrepresentation of the Constitution. Congress has oversight WRT everything in the executive branch.
Since Mr. Bush believes that Congress should just shut up and pay for the war, the interesting question is what will happen if enough Republicans want to keep their seats so that the veto is overridden. I can imagine him saying that it is logistically impossible to withdraw by the given time. I can see him saying that the military needs a year to plan. Would violating the law in this case be enough for you to favor impeachment?
Have you read the law? See my post #21. It’s unclear exactly what the law requires, and Bush can hem and haw his way thru 2008 even if this bill passes, if you ask me. It’s a start, but only a start.
No, that’s not true. That interpretation would make Congress the supreme branch of government, and the other two branches subordinate to it.
Thought experiment: the Supreme Court rules that the president’s assertion of executive privilege with respect to Harriet Miers is justified. Congress, incensed, decides to reduce the Supreme Court to three justices, and stops funding for the remaining six, contingent upon the Court’s sticking to their ruling. If they reconsider, Congress will drop the funding changes.
Can they do this?
I don’t believe the Congress could pass a law saying, “You must use these funds to pay only the salaries of Ruth Bader-Ginsburg, David Souter, and the men’s room attendant,” but I do believe Congress could (provided they had the numbers to over-ride the President’s veto) reduce the overall funding such that the Supreme Court would have to make some pretty drastic choices as to what activities it can continue to fund. If they pass such an Appropriations Bill, and the Senate passes it as well - where’s the Constitutional violation? I was always under the assumption that Congress had the power of the purse.
And forgot to mention - I’ve seen the exact thing happen at the local and state gov’t level. Don’t like a particular program a department is administering? Don’t fund the department and the program is only a paper exercise.
But you missed an important part of the thought experiment: The part where Congress made the funding contingent on the Court ruling a certain way. That would put the Congress in the role of the Court, not just in charge of its budget.
I suspect that if Congress does override a veto on the bill in question, that Bush will take it to the SCOTUS claiming that as long as the AUMF is active, Congress can’t tell the CiC how to execute the war. It can either approve funds or not approve funds, but it can’t make the funds contingent on particular military tactics. It can authorize a war or de-authorize a war. I’m not exactly sure how the Court would rule on that.
John Mace gets it in one.
Congress holds the power of the purse, yes, but they cannot exercise that power in a way that destroys or dominates the roles assigned to the other branches. They could cut the size of the Court down to a single Justice; they cannot do it in order to force a particular ruling from the Court.
Similarly, as long as Congress has authorized war, they cannot direct the Commander-in-Chief on the specifics of how to prosecute that war.
Of course, Congress could simply withdraw the authorization that creates the war, and override a veto, without offending the separation of powers.
I’ll wait until there is a bill that will actually become law. As for whether such a bill would be constitutional, it will be an interesting case. I believe bills are passed all the time specifically forbidding funding for certain activities (like abortion, for instance.) Since it would be trivial for Congress to pass a law forbidding funding for more than X troops in Iraq after date Y, which would be equivalent to a law requiring them to be withdrawn, I can’t see how they couldn’t effectively control it at that gross level. Ordering troops to specific cities would be another case.
So you want to debate a bill without understanding what that bill actually says? It’s not some 50 page bill, btw. It’ll take you 5 minutes, tops, to read the whole thing.
But those laws don’t infringe on another branch’s constitutional authority.
But that is (potentially) infringing on the constitutional authority of the executive branch wrt the president being the CiC. They authorized troops to be in Iraq, so it’s not clear to me that they can tell the president it has to be 120,546 instead of 120,547. They’d be on better constitutional grounds if they revoked the AUMF first, and then set a deadline to get out.
Not at all. Oversight is not supremacy.
No – not because of any theoretical separation-of-powers principle (which you will find clearly expressed nowhere in the Constitution, though the intent is clear enough, especially when read together with The Federalist) but because the Constitution expressly states SCOTUS judges serve for life or on good behavior. Congress can’t even cut their salaries – “diminution of pay” of federal judges during their service is expressly forbidden, presumably to safeguard their political independence. Congress could reduce the SCOTUS to three justices, but not immediately; those now serving would have to be allowed to remain on the bench until death or retirement.
Who, to be blunt, sez?
To be more specific: if they pass a law such as the one you propose in your thought experiment, could the SC declare it unconstitional? On what specific grounds? If they did, what would be the practical effect of such a declaration?
Daniel
Well… I concede that I forgot that, as BrainGlutton reminds us now, that the Constitution says that federal judges’ compensation “…shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.” That puts the skids under the specific hypo I was trying on for size.
So yes, the Court could declare such a law unconstitutional, and with pretty solid reason, which is not exactly the situation I hoped to illustrate.
Those wacky guys designing the constitution knew their chops, it looks like :). I take it there’s no similar passage in the document forbidding a cut in the military budget during wartime?
Daniel
I really wish that Congress would revoke the AUMF. That is unquestionably within their constitutional powers. Considering how unpopular the war is, and how so many of us want us out of there, what is the problem? Revoke the AUMF and then demand a timetable for withdrawal from Bush. As long as the AUMF is still in effect, Bush can claim that Congress is infringing on his constitutional authority as CiC, and he might very well have a case. This particular legislation, as well intentioned as it is, may not be constitutional and even if it is, it still doesn’t have enough teeth to force Bush to actually do anything.
I believe Sens. Lugar and Warner have expresssed a similar opinion, by demanding a new authorization be placed before them. If we need a new one, doesn’t that implicitly suggest that the old one is broken?
Sen. Clinton, among others, advocates precisely that. Bush would doubtless veto it, but wouldn’t that take a nice bit of jujitsu? “But you gave me permission once! No takebacks! (stamp of child’s foot)”
I do admire the loyalists’ ability to keep a straight face while asserting that any attempt Congress may make to end a war is “micromanaging” it, or somehow an unconstitutional incursion on absolute barriers between the branches.
Yes, LHOD, the writers knew their stuff, specifically, they understood human nature and how a representative democracy has to be based on it. The constant debates about who is responsible for what, and who has what authority, was intentional, and form the very basis for how a Republic is kept. It keeps all the branches to be forced to talk with and interact with each other. The checks and balances system is necessary, and so is the debate about what the checks and balances system is.