Iraq War Funding Vote Redux
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James Joyner | Thursday, November 8, 2007 |
House Democrats will hold yet another vote on Iraq War funding.
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.”
The irony here is that, while trying to make the point that they oppose the war and show that they have the ability to constrain President Bush, these repeated stunts have exactly the opposite effect.
If Congress wants to end funding for the war and force the president to bring the troops home, they have the ability at their disposal. Rather clearly, though, they lack the votes to do either of those things. This is, therefore, merely a production of the Speaker Who Cried Wolf.
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.
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Or it will be like the dog who continuously chases cars. The dog will continue in a fruitless but presumably enjoyable passtime, get run over or wonder what it has got a hold of if it actually catches a car.
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