200,000 Civilian Military Workers Face Layoffs
The layoffs would affect about 100,000 federal employees and 100,000 contract workers currently employed by the Army and Marine Corps.
"In mid-February, the Army will run out of all of their O&M (Operations and Maintenance) funding for the entire year, because they will have spent it on operations in Afghanistan and Iraq," said DoD spokesman Bryan Whitman in a press release. "That will require some fairly significant and harsh actions by the department, specifically the Army. And the Marine Corps is only about a month behind them."
President Bush has requested that Congress allocate $178 billion in emergency war spending, but has promised to veto any bill that sets a mandatory date for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
"Beginning in February, I submitted detailed funding requests to Congress to fund operations in the war on terror," said President Bush in his Radio Address on December 1. "Our military has waited on these funds for months."
Also See:
Iraq and the U.S. Want to be Friends Forever
Iraq War Results & Statistics as of Nov 18, 2007 (Liberal Politics)
Facts and Data on Conditions In Iraq: A Graphic Gallery (US Politics)
Comments
i thought blackmail was against the law. everyones law
Blackmailing Congress? Yes, but Bush is just the latest president to use the technique.
When President Teddy Roosevelt wanted to send the Navy’s “Great White Fleet” on a cruise around the world in 1907, as a show of U.S. naval supremacy, Congress considered the trip a saber-rattling waste of money and threatened to refuse to pay for the fuel needed. Did presidential power have a solution? Yes. Roosevelt spent the rest of the money he already had in the budget for fuel to send the fleet half way around the world, and then dared Congress to withhold the funds needed to bring it back. Roosevelt got the money.
Robert