Pelosi, Democrats To Try The Old “Fund The War To Bring The Troops Home” Stunt Again
It didn’t work before when things in Iraq looked pretty bleak, and it won’t work now that the picture of the war has improved significantly.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House will vote as early as Friday on legislation that would spend $50 billion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but require that President Bush start bringing troops home.
The money is about a quarter of the $196 billion requested by Bush. It would finance about four months of combat in Iraq, Pelosi told reporters on Thursday.
“This is not a blank check for the president,” she said at a Capitol Hill news conference. “This is providing funding for the troops limited to a particular purpose, for a short time frame.”
Rather than being a sign of Democrats aggressively trying to end the war, I think this tact is just the Democrats trying to appear to be pursuing an anti-war agenda. The Democrats know they don’t have the votes to pull funding from the war. They also know that they don’t have the votes to support any sort of legislation calling on the President to bring the troops home. Further, they know that outside of a de-authorization of the war and/or a denial of funding for the war they have no way to stop it.
Per the constitution, they cannot dictate troop levels to the President. Their branch of government simply does not have that power.
But by funding the war a little at a time, and by grandstanding about including language that would require troop withdrawals, Democrats can make a show out of being anti-war for the elements of their far-left base that won’t accept anything but outright defeat in Iraq even as we’re poised to have a great deal of success.
