Democrats are completely failing to wield their powers with the Iraq war funding bill. What gives?
The Democrats do not need to “negotiate” with the White House. All they have to do is craft a bill they believe is good, and keep sending it to President Bush over and over again. It will be his backside over the fire until he signs it. They are providing for the troops; he is veto-ing. Who do you think loses that?
I see three possibilities why the Democrats do not act on the belief that they can force the President to sign a war funding bill of their choice.
1. They have not thought all the way through the scenario to realize that if they keep sending him a bill, eventually he will have to sign it.
2. They are afraid that if they do not provide him the money legally, he will use executive authority to redirect (steal) it from other programs, and somehow come out looking like a hero while they are cast as both obstructionist, and unsuccessful. (In reality, they would come out looking like they stood their ground, and ultimately Bush would buckle.)
3. Democrats simply do not have a bill they like for Iraq. They are afraid of taking responsibility, and they are happy to appear “bound” by the President’s choice. They do not want to make the decisions themselves.
Unfortunately, option three appears most likely to me. Does anyone disagree? Please speak up. Because otherwise, the Democrats do not deserve leadership; even when the choice is Republicans. Leadership means choice.
It isn’t quite “they are providing, he is veto-ing”. The Democrats are attaching (or have attached) all sorts of pet spending projects and minimum wage increases and other non-defense oriented spending, and the President has said, give me a clean funding bill. There was an opinion poll I saw recently that a clear majority of the country wanted the funding bill to be stripped of non-funding items (not that I place much stock in opinion polls). And as far as who loses this whole political charade, it isn’t the President, its the troops, but in the twisted mind of a large part of the Democrat base, injuring the troops is fine if it also injures the president.
wears the albatross of Vietnam around their necks.To this day America is paying for their mistakes of thirty odd years ago. They abandonned America’s fighting men and women. They opened them for ridicule. They made military service dishonorable. They vilified the sacrifices, large and small, that every man and woman made in Vietnam. James E. Carter exacerbated the problem. Bill Clinton didn’t help.They aren’t going to go down that road again. Well maybe Mr. Murtha will, but Mr. Murtha as well as being mad is a sleazeball. I think Nancy Pelosi envisions herself as Marie Antoinete is she were to go down that road. I am of the opinion that Massachusetts has had enough of John F. Kerry, for a lot of reasons.
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The fact that the democrats laden the defense appropriation bill with layer after layer of pork didn’t help. Talk about pigs at the trough. And they promised to clean the mess up!
And it’s with a capital “D”.
Perhaps when they saw they were polling behind President Bush’s anemic numbers they sensed a change of course was necessary?
Combined with numbers too small to really force a change, the best the party can hope for is to keep this unpopular issue around the necks of the GOP through next summer.
Good call,
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Let’s not fund the war and try to let General Petreus win it with his new strategy. Let’s “hang the war around the President” to help us at the ballot box. I wish that comment were made in jest, but I know it wasn’t…
Democrats are completely failing to wield their powers with the Iraq war funding bill. What gives?
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Aside from the fact that there is a petulent child pResident currently in the White House who would veto any such funding bill (and the Democrats do not have a 2/3 majority in either house to over-ride a veto), the Democrats do not have a sufficient majority in the Senate to enact cloture to stop a fillibuster. Indeed, it is highly unlikely that the Dem leadership could get all of the Dem members to enact cloture (Lieberman, would vote against it, for example).
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Regarding the petulent child pResident, what the Dems could do is just refuse to pass the requested funding bill. They won’t do that, of course, but that’s because the petulent child pResident has 250,000 hostages (150,000 US military and an estimated 100,000 US mercenaries–so called “contractors”) and he would just leave them there without funding. This is manifestly different from Vietnam (viz. MCRD @ Wed May 23, 2007 at 09:36:57 AM EDT), where virtually all Americans had been withdrawn by the time the funding was cut off for the South Vietnamese government, and it was relatively easy to extract the rest as the North Vietnamese Army descended on Saigon.
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BTW, MCRD’s comment reminds me of German General Ludendorf’s grasping at the DolchstossLegende (stab-in-the-back legend) to explain Germany’s loss of WWI: the Social Democrats in the Reichstag opposed further funding of the war in 1916. You can read about the details here.. If you read the entire article, you will note some parallels to the current war, particularly in the “Profiteering and civil unrest” section. The difference, of course, between Germany in WWI and the US now is that Germany had conscription (as did the US in Vietnam–which led to unrest in the US during Vietnam). But the US now does not, and the unrest during the Vietnam period is one reason why conscription was eliminated.
We are still not on the same page here.
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Raj, and Edprisby, and others who argue that “Democrats lack the numbers to overturn a veto,” do not get it. No one has to over-turn a veto. I repeat: Democrats do not need to over-turn a veto. It is Bush who has to sign a bill that will give the troops he has led into Iraq their funding.
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This is due to the basic power allocation inherent in the budget process:
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1. The legislative branch drafts, and passes, a bill that, as that body sees it, best serves the country. The President can attempt to influence, but CAN NOT CONTROL, the drafting and passage of this bill.
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2. The President signs, or vetoes, a bill, according to which choice he (or she) believes best serves the country. Congress can attempt to influence, but CAN NOT CONTROL, whether the President signs or vetoes this bill.
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With regard to funding the troops that the President has placed in the field, there is a pressing time issue. As Commander in Chief, it is the President’s POWER and RESPONSIBILITY to care for those troops.
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If forced to choose between cutting his war short, and cutting off funding from the troops, President Bush will choose to fund the troops.
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The President has vetoed past bills, because Congress has not yet faced him with the stark choice above. Instead, Congress has said, “What are your requirements, Mr. President? Let us work together to provide you with a bill you will sign.”
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That sentiment represents an abrogation by the Democratic Congress of the POWERS they are invested with.
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Again, it comes down to this:
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If forced to choose between cutting his war short, and cutting off funding from the troops, President Bush will choose to fund the troops. But only if Congress presents Bush with that choice, and no other. That is Congress’ POWER, and its DUTY.
…the first sentence of my second paragraph. I wrote that the Congress could refuse to pass a funding bill.
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And in the rest of the paragraph, I explained why they won’t do that.
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The allocation of power is that the petulent child pResident has 250,000 US hostages in Iraq, which is reasonable to assume he would not remove even in the lack of funding. That is why the Dems will give him the money he requested. The hostages would be stuck in Iraq with no means for the US government to support them.
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As an aside, I heard on the radio today that the House Dem leadership has decided to split the funding request into two parts: one for the funding of the war, and the second for the funding of the ancillary items (improvements to Walter Reed Hospital, etc.) and allow the members to vote on each bill separately. That would put the members on record as to who voted for either portion of the funding bill.
You might wish to re-read your own first paragraph, where you talk about over-turning the veto.
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As to your next point: for Congress to refuse to pass a spending bill, as you suggest, is also abrogation of duty. Their duty is clear and simple: to pass a bill they believe serves the country. NOT, to pass a bill they believe President Bush would sign.
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You are wrong in believing that President Bush would leave the troops in Iraq un-funded. He would either remove them, or find (steal) the funds from a non-DOD budget. Which would be impeachable.
I wrote the first and second paragraphs as two separate options for the Democrats. They don’t have enough votes in either house to override a veto (first paragraph), and, they run the risk that Bush’s American hostages in Iraq will be left high and dry if they don’t fund his war (second paragraph). I sincerely don’t know how to put it more succinctly.
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As to your next point: for Congress to refuse to pass a spending bill, as you suggest, is also abrogation of duty.
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I hate to take a two-by-four to the head of an ass (that’s a donkey, by the way), but that is not what I wrote. Bush has the Dems in Congress by the metaphorical short hairs. The Congressional Dems don’t know what he might do if they don’t provide him with the requested money. It’s mighty nice that you are so prescient as to be able to say that
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You are wrong in believing that President Bush would leave the troops in Iraq un-funded. He would either remove them, or find (steal) the funds from a non-DOD budget.
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But the congressional Dems don’t know that. How could they? And yes, you are correct that using funds appropriated for one purpose for another is a criminal offense. And who would prosecute the tranferor? Alberto Gonzales?
Wars are just too profitable to be left to one party. Too many people are raking in the money to let go of the war. This little show was just to fool the public into believing that the parties are opposing each other. Show’s over, everybody go home.
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Would our senators and congressmen wish to see the defense contractors in New England start to close shop? What about their own profits, such a Diane Feinstein’s through her husband’s company? (I understand she is building a new mansion in San Francisco. How many more Democratic and Republican politicians are making big bucks on the war?)
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When I see Democrats talking about bringing the troops down to 75,000, that sounds like “staying the course”, not ending the war. When I hear of Democrats talking about conscripting “Civil Servants”, I think of a cute idea for the back door to be opened for a military draft (since when did the government have trouble getting civil servants?).
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War without end.
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On the cheap, too. 3500 dead? Almost 60,000 for Viet-Nam. We’ve a way to go. How are Democrats different from Republicans? I’m a little slow to understand.
War without end.
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On the cheap, too. 3500 dead? Almost 60,000 for Viet-Nam
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…I realize that the USians wish to ignore the dead on the other side of unnecessary wars, but the fact your statistics ignore the number of Iraqis and Vietnamese who have died as a result of the US actions. In Iraq, it is on the order of 650,000 (1996 Johns Hopkins study, with a relatively wide 95% confidence interval, but the lower end is still well over 200K), and in Vietnam, estimates on the order of 3 million.
Do they really want to DISPLAY how thin their triumphal 2006 margin of victory is? (How IS Sen. Johnson doing?) If the numbers are too small, it goofs up the MSM script about the vast sea change in government.
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Have they counted noses, and realized that they cannot afford to force some of the new pro-life, pro-war Southern Democrats onto the record, to display that the DemocratIC Party is not the monolith as advertised?
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Are they like a puppy chasing a car who caught it, and now have no clue what to do with it?