How Congress could put limits on Bush in Iraq

Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

WASHINGTON - As Congress considers whether to pay for military operations in Iraq, here are some questions and answers on how Congress has limited deployments in the past.

Q. Can the Congress vote to end the funding of the military deployment in Iraq?

Yes, it can, and there is precedent for it doing so. In 1973 Congress voted to end funding for military operations in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

But most of the Democratic leaders in Congress do not want to cut off all funding for military operations in Iraq. They want to pressure or persuade President Bush to begin a withdrawal of troops.

Armed Services Committee chairman Rep. Ike Skelton, D- Mo., said this week, “We’re not about to cut off funding for troops. We know that. That would be injurious to our troops and their families.”

Asked Wednesday about ending the funding of military operations, Sen. Barack Obama, D- Ill., “The problem is that you’re using a mallet, rather than a scalpel.”

Q. Can the Congress vote to pay only for some specific operations and missions in Iraq — such as attacking al Qaida targets  — and not pay for others, such as intervening in a Sunni-Shia warfare?

A. Some Democrats are trying to find a way to do this.

A leading Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jack Reed, D- R.I., said he wants to fund such missions as “continuing to train Iraqi security forces, attacking al Qaida elements and potential terrorists wherever they might be, Iraq or Somalia or elsewhere, and also ensuring that the territorial integrity of Iraq is not abused by its neighbors.”

But he opposes U.S. troops getting entangled in Sunni-Shia fighting.

Obama confronts 'big dilemma'
Asked if there’s a way to pay for some operations in Iraq, but not pay for a surge of 21,500 troops as Bush proposed, Obama said “That’s what I’m trying to figure out…. My understanding so far is that we can do it constitutionally, but as a practical matter if the president chooses to go ahead with a deployment and then simply runs out of money halfway through and those troops are already there, then you start getting into a game of chicken…. That is the big dilemma in trying to figure out what mechanism we can use to stop what I’m convinced is the wrong policy, without shortchanging the young men and women who’ve already been deployed.”

But the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Joe Biden, D- Del., disagrees with the idea of Congress paying only for specific missions in Iraq: “We have a standing army with a budget of hundreds of billions of dollars.  You can’t go in and, like a tinker toy, and play around and say, ‘You can’t spend the money on this piece and this piece.”

Q. The Senate will vote in the next few weeks on a non-binding resolution declaring that Bush ought to not send another 21,500 troops to Iraq. If the Senate passes this resolution, what practical effect will it have?

A. None, other than putting senators on the record. The resolution would not cut off funding for operations.

Q. What is first chance for Congress to try to limit how the funds are used in Iraq?

It will come sometime in February when Congress votes on a supplemental spending bill for Iraq. "If you're really serious about cutting off funds for the troops, that is the vehicle, the supplemental, not these sense of the Senate resolutions," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell Thursday. "That would be a cleaner way to debate this; it would be a serious debate with serious consequences, if you actually conditioned the money."

Q. Can the Congress vote to impose certain conditions or time limits on the funding?

“They could pass restrictive legislation if they wanted to. Politically it is difficult, but legally and constitutionally they have the authority,” said Louis Fisher, an analyst at the Library of Congress and author of the standard work, Presidential War Power.

In 1993, after U.S. forces were sent to Somalia, Congress passed legislation requiring all troops to be out by March 31, 1994.

Limits imposed in 1980s
Also, Fisher said, during President Reagan’s presidency, Congress passed legislation saying U.S. military advisors in Honduras could not go within 120 miles of the border with Nicaragua. Members of congress feared that Reagan might try to use U.S. forces to topple the Sandinista government of Nicaragua.

“Congress can definitely put on time limits and boundary limits,” Fisher said.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D- Mass., has proposed putting a ceiling on the number of U.S. troops in Iraq; under his bill no more than the number already there on Jan. 9, 2007 could be deployed.

In the House, Rep. John Murtha, D- Pa., said he might move to prohibit troops who are now in Iraq from having their tours of duty extended.

But any move by the Democrats to impose a time limit or a troop ceiling would need to muster 60 votes in the Senate, as Reed noted Wednesday. “We’re not in that big a majority,” Reed said.

And Biden criticizes the idea of a limit on the number of troops Bush could keep in Iraq: “It’s constitutionally questionable whether or not you can do that.  I think it is unconstitutional to say (to Bush), ‘We’re going to tell you (that) you can go, but we’re going to micromanage the war.’ When we wrote the Constitution, the intention was to give the commander in chief the authority how to use the forces, when you authorize them, to be able to use the forces.”

MORE FROM POLITICS

Politics Section Front

McCain may act soon on VP pick Newsweek: McCain and Obama miss the real crisis Obama speaks in Berlin   Brownstein: The risk of Obama rapture Newsweek: Factchecking McCain's Viagra moment NYT: Obama wows Europe — vaguely U.S. citizens in Europe give more to Obama Rice: Pakistan must up fight against Taliban Students offer reward for Rice arrest Newsweek: Hispanics turning to Obama   Politics Section Front   Add Politics headlines to your news reader: