In recent weeks, Congressional debate wrt the Iraq unpleasantness has largely centered around the White House’s request for some large number of billions of dollars to fund what is being called a “surge”.
There appears to be a standoff in the making, however, as Congress looks like the bill they send to Pennsylvania Avenue will include a requirement that American troops be withdrawn from Iraq within a certain timeframe. The Administration has vowed that any bill with such a requirement in place will be met with a veto.
There has been a lot of posturing and finger-wagging on the part of many participants in the debate. Some anti-war Democrats have said that they will not vote for any funding at all, while others insist that if a funding bill with troop withdrawal is not sent up to the White House, it will result in the pro-war side sending a funding bill without them. Some pro-war lawmakers even say that if a funding bill that the President will not sign is sent to the Oval Office, then eventually Congress will have to send one up that meets his specifications (no trooop withdrawal).
Doesn’t Congress have the power to refuse to send up any funding bill at all? I’m not talking about political will, here; I’m truly curious to know by what mechanism the Administration would have its way in this matter, should Congress simply decide to dig in its heels.
Signing statement? As for that, is there anything to prevent the administration from accepting the bill with the troop withdrawal requirement, and issuing a signing statement that renders the requirement moot?
First of all, let’s correct the understanding of the “signing statement.”
When signing a bill, the President will, from time to time, issue a statement clarifying what he understands the law to mean. This is usually done when there are gray areas in the bill, about which reasonable people could differ. The President is not able to change the wording of the law, which becomes a part of the U. S. Code, through a signing statement.
So, if a bill passes, and is not vetoed, or is vetoed but the veto is over-ridden, the President’s “signing statement” will not change the provisions of the law.
Now this doesn’t answer the more important part of the question: what happens if the Congress refuses to pass a bill funding the cost of the “surge,” or passes one that is subsequently vetoed? The answer is that the military won’t have the money to pay for all the things they already have requested money for, and still be able to pay for the surge. So they will have to decide if they can, and want to, use money already appropriated to pay for some or all of the “surge.” Congress appropriates the money, but it has limits on how much micro-management it can use to control the expenditure thereof. Separation of powers and all that, you know.
And yes, they can refuse to appropriate money. It’s a very good way to hamstring an administration, but it’s a two-edged sword. Just as soon as some group of kids gets blown up in an attack in Iraq, the administration will beat the Congress about the head and neck with their failure to provide for the soldiers in Iraq properly. NOT sure Congress wants to risk that.
They’re sending Bush a funding bill. If Bush vetos it, then it’s Bush who isn’t funding the troops. The thing the Democrats have to do is push that angle in a unified and consistent manner. “We gave him funding. He refused it. Talk to him.”
But… since the POTUS is the head of the executive branch, then his ‘clarification’ will presumably be given a lot of weight in terms of how the executive interprets the law, especially where reasonable people could differ - is that right?
That’s right. In case your interpretation differs, and you suffer at the hands of some misguided federal official, you can ask the court system for their interpretation as well.
A much smaller (though equally controversial) funding dispute occurred a couple years ago when the DoD set up the “Information Awareness Office” (formerly known as the Total Information Awareness program). It was an office to oversee several highly expensive surveillance-related projects which Congress (then still under Republican control) saw as too intrusive and unnecessary. In the next DoD appropriation bill, they budgeted zero dollars for the Information Awareness Office.
A couple of the programs have continued under the discretionary budgets of other offices in the Pentagon, including DARPA.
Nothing at all, aside from political ramifications. Teddy Roosevelt did something similar: He wanted to send his “Great White Fleet” around the world as a show of force. He didn’t have the funding to do it, but he did have the funding to send them halfway around the world, which he did. Then he basically asked Congress if they were going to give him the money to bring them back home again.
Of course, with a tactic like that, depending on how it’s spun, it could end up looking bad for the President, bad for Congress, or both.
Let me say this clearly as a Republican who values honesty and clarity over partisonship: Screw Bush. How he can send volunteering military personnel into that hellhole for almost no gain is beyond me. I hate him as a person.
The recent House and Senate action to continue funding in Iraq (and Afghanistan), but with defined (but different withdrawal dates) means a conference committe will iron out the details before the single bill is sent to the president for signature, or veto.
Funding runs out on April 15, unless Bush signs the bill that will come out of conference committee. Bush’s public pronouncements says he will veto the bill.
The high stakes game has begun. If Reid and Pelosi want to raise the temperature to maximum, all they need to do is have the conference committee report out the bill to the president on Friday, April 13, 2007 (Ha! Friday the 13th!). Bush would have a day to decide to sign it (with a withdrawal date in place), or veto it and the funding stops the next day. Bush would have no leverage to get Congress to come up with new legislation more to his liking without current funding being stopped during any interim.
The political stakes between the White House and Congress, Democrat and Republican are very, very high. Regardless of who blinks first, what follows next will impact this country for quite a while.
I disagree. First of all, the lack of funding won’t stop the war, won’t stop the actions of the military, won’t even cause anyone in Iraq to blink. All parties will be unwilling to suffer the consequences of actually degrading the effort in Iraq at present, because, as I pointed out, just one body bag attributable to “lack of proper funding” will be a disaster politically to both sides.
So the real question is, how long can the issue go on before the Congress accepts that it cannot force the end to a war it authorized, and the President realizes he cannot administrate a country effectively if he isn’t given the money to do so, including needed funding for war efforts. Either way, it’s all political hash and won’t be remembered in two years time.
MUCH more important for the whole country is the more generic underlying issue: when will the country’s government get our troops extracted from a war that has no end?
And for the record. The bill under discussion is not just for the “surge.” It is a supplemental appropriation to run the war in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
And today on TV I’ve heard reports of cut-off dates of 15 April, 26 April, mid May, and June 15.
