Cutting Funding (not just for Iraq)

[Roopull]

Alrighty... I threw out a few lighthearted posts to wet my feet here at your lovely forum. I hope you enjoyed the impales scrotum story, the eagle & the deer head, the "stupid speed limits" story & others. But, now it's time to throw something out there that's a little heavier & see if it sticks.


Note the embedded link

Link to Article

From AP: Congress to test bounds of its war power.
President Bush may be the decision maker, but the Democratic-controlled Congress holds the purse strings. Whether to yank them shut when it comes to the conflict in Iraq, and under what conditions, is the question facing newly empowered majority Democrats.

No one challenges the notion that Congress can stop a war by canceling its funding. In fact, Vice President Dick Cheney challenged Congress to back up its objections to Bush's plan to put 21,500 more troops in Iraq by zeroing out the war budget.

Underlying Cheney's gambit is the consensus understanding that such a drastic move is doubtful because it would be fraught with political peril.

But there are other legislative options to force the war's end, say majority Democrats and some of Bush's traditional Republican allies.

The alternatives range from capping the number of troops permitted in Iraq to cutting off funding for troop deployments beyond a certain date or setting an end date for the war.

"The Constitution makes Congress a coequal branch of government. It's time we start acting like it," said Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., who is chairing a hearing Tuesday on Congress' war powers and forwarding legislation to eventually prohibit funding for the deployment of troops to Iraq.

His proposal, like many others designed to force an end to U.S. involvement in the bloody conflict, is far from having enough support even to come up for a vote on the Senate floor.

Closer to that threshold is a nonbinding resolution declaring that Bush's proposal to send 21,500 more troops to Baghdad and Anbar province is "not in the national interest." The Senate could take up that measure early next month.

But some senators, complaining that the resolution is symbolic, are forwarding tougher bills.

Let's ignore the whole Iraq war debate for just a few moments. There is some delicious irony in this story... did you catch it?

One of my representatives in the great halls of Washington is Johnny Isakson. He's a republican. He's also a co-author of the FairTax bill. That would make the casual observer believe that Johnny must be a conservative... a fiscal conservative. You know... the type of guy who is for limited government spending. He even says as much.

However, he's been in office since the much heralded do nothing republican revolution of the Gingrich era. In that time, he's voted for just about every single appropriations bill that's crossed his desk. (I exclude FY 2006 from this summary because he came under fire for being a budget pimp.)

For those of you who don't know, an appropriations bill is basically a bill asking for more money to be spent than was originally in the bloated budget in the first place. It's where much of the loved & hated pork comes from.


Anyhoo, Johnny has rarely ever voted against these pork barrels. A quick glance makes it clear that just about the only ones (about 10 out of about 200) that he's voted against had something to do with funding abortions... so, now we know what Johnny is actually all about.


But, I don't mean to pick on Johnny. He's but one slut in Washington... one among hundreds... literally. What... 640 or so?

For fiscal year 2006, there were only 11 appropriations bills. Doesn't sound bad, does it... well, not until you realize that stuffed into those 11 appropriations bills, there were 9,963 pork projects totalling $29 billion!!! Remember that next time ANY politician mentions the deficit.

Alaska's share (the real whore in FY 2006) came to $489 per person... consider that when you're paying your taxes. That's not the cost of government... that's the amount of money that went to Alaska citizens in the form of pork alone...


Now, back to the Iraq war stuff... are you still with me on this?

I could fill your screen with dozens of links to Democrats & Republicans alike lamenting the state of the budget. It's virtually nonstop...


Why oh WHY does it take a battle over funding troops for anyone in Wasshington to decide to cut funding for something?
And there is the delicious Irony I mentioned.

 

[Hobbit]

What drives me crazy is that the Constution of the United States, the supreme law of the land, states that the President has SOLE discretion over the use of our troops, and that the only thing Congress could do would be to cut the funding, which would invite political disaster. However, the Democrats keep claiming that they should also have control over the troops. This doesn't surprise me, as big government idiots have been sidestepping the Constitution for almost a century now.

 

[Darwins Friend]

Just like NASA: No Bucks - No Buck Rogers.