It seems likely that the Democratic-controlled 110th U.S. Congress will pass a non-binding, concurrent resolution condemning President Bush’s recently ordered troop buildup in Iraq. The operative term is "non-binding." The resolution merely expresses the "sense of the congress" that President Bush did the wrong thing. Many past congresses have told many past presidents the same thing with little if any effect on the issue at hand. If Congress could end the Iraq war, would they, and how?
Declaring peace
Congress could outright end the Iraq war by repealing their Oct. 10, 2002 resolution declaring it. Congress will not do this, however, because neither Republican nor Democrat, with the 2008 election looming, wants to be remembered for voting to declare surrender in the Global War on Terror. An overstatement perhaps, but that’s how it would be spun. And, of course, any such resolution passed by Congress would certainly be vetoed by President Bush, with little chance of his veto being overridden.
Starving the war of money
Congress could also refuse to approve further funding for the war. To force an end to the Vietnam War, Congress both repealed its declaration of war and set a date for the cutoff of additional funding. However, presidents still have ways around Congress’ control of the purse strings.
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.
More recently, and much more expensively, a January 18, 2007 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report shows that while Congress has approved $503 billion for activities related to Iraq and the war on terror, little of that funding was subject to the budgetary constraints imposed on regular government spending.
The CBO identified three methods employed by the Bush administration to bypass standard budgetary processes in funding the Iraq war:
- designate the expenditure as an "emergency necessity;"
- declare that the expenditure will be used for "overseas contingency operations related to the global war on terrorism; and
- cite a specific allocation in the current budget resolution and authorize an adjustment to that limit to accommodate additional spending.
Both designating the expenditure as needed for an emergency and declaring the money needed to fight the war on terrorism were specifically allowed by Congress through its approval of the budget resolution in effect at the time.
The "budget resolution" is a binding, concurrent (agreed to by both House and Senate) resolution establishing annual expenditure totals, dividing those totals into into functional categories (e.g., transportation, defense, etc.), and sometimes includes reconciliation instructions to the appropriate House or Senate committees. The budget resolution combines some of the spending recommendations contained in the president's annual proposed budget with those of Congress.
To the generic war on terror, the current budget resolution fact sheet (.pdf) states, "War on Terror: Budget also accounts for the pending FY 2005 Supplemental ($82 billion), and anticipates $50 billion for FY 2006 costs."
Specific to funding for the war in Iraq, Section 402 of the current budget resolution enables Congress to "designate provisions of legislation as an emergency (meeting specified criteria) in order to exempt such measures from enforcement of this resolution with respect to the new budget authority, outlays, and receipts resulting from them," and to make "supplemental appropriations for FY 2006 for overseas contingency operations related to the global war on terrorism."
As Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio, 10th), wrote in the Huffington Post, "There is only one way in which the United States will withdraw from Iraq, prior to the end of President Bush's term: Congress must vote to cut off funds."
But, as Rep. Kucinich points out, any cut off of Iraq war funding by Congress must be total, because "Even a substantial reduction of funds could leave open the door for a legal claim that Congress still intends to keep troops in Iraq."
Total war funding cut off not likely
Once again, there appears to be very little chance that Congress will move to completely cut off funding for the Iraq war. Instead, Congress will at least continue to budget funds to support current troop levels. In a January 7 Face the Nation interview, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-California), stated "If the president chooses to escalate the war, in his budget request we want to see a distinction between what is there to support the troops who are there now. The American people and the Congress support those troops. We will not abandon them." A position that leaves Rep. Kucinich's "door" wide open.
