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Congress
Seeks Iraq War End Through Funding Bill |
Posted:
03.28.07
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As the Iraq war enters its fifth year with more than 3,200 U.S.
service members killed, lawmakers are seeking to end U.S. military
involvement in Iraq, raising new questions over how war powers
are shared between the executive and legislative branches.
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After passing a symbolic resolution opposing an increase in
the number of U.S. troops in Iraq last month, the Democrat-controlled
Congress is now seeking to pull out those troops.
 Last
week, the House of Representatives approved a nonbinding measure
that would set an Aug. 31, 2008 deadline for the withdrawal of
U.S. troops from Iraq. Calling the war "a grotesque mistake,"
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said, "The American
people do not support a war without end and neither should this
Congress."
This week, the Senate considered similar language that would
seek to have troops out of Iraq by March 31, 2008. The approval
of attaching such wording to a larger funding bill marks the first
time the Senate has shown support for a withdrawal timeline.
Two Democratic senators, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Ben Nelson
of Nebraska, and independent Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman
of Connecticut, had sided with Republicans earlier this month
in defeating a similar measure.
The Senate narrowly defeated a Republican amendment that would
have stripped any deadlines from the bill. A vote on the bill
itself was still pending by Wednesday afternoon.
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An expected
presidential veto |
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 President
Bush has promised to veto any legislation that sets a timeline
for troop withdrawal, saying the measures in the House bill "substitute
the mandates of Congress for the considered judgment of our military
commanders."
Democrats are unlikely to get the two-thirds vote needed to override
a presidential veto, but they could put the president in a difficult
position, forcing him to overrule a bill that includes $100 billion
in emergency spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the
Congressional Research Service.
If the president vetoes the bill, he may not have the funds he
says he needs by mid-April to support his Iraq strategies, including
the 23,000-soldier increase in Baghdad announced earlier this
year.
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Split war
powers |
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As Congress appears headed for a showdown with the president,
some Republicans have accused Democrats of overstepping their
authority in wartime.
 "It
would be a tremendous mistake for the Congress of the United States
to micromanage this war and bring it to a conclusion through artificially
constraining decisions on the battlefield," Representative
Jim McCrery, R-La., Said last week.
The rules dividing the powers to declare and mange a war come
from the U.S. Constitution. Article II, Section 2 reads, "The
President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of
the United States," giving the White House the authority
to conduct war, putting the president at the top of the military
chain of command.
But Article I, Section 8 gives Congress the power "to make
Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval
Forces," and "to raise and support Armies," which
the legislative branch has done by providing funds through annual
appropriations bills.
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The power
to end a war |
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"If the Senate doesn't support the mission in Iraq, it has
only one option, and that's to decide whether or not to fund that
mission. That's our constitutional role," Senate Minority
Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Said, the Washington Post reported.
 Congresses
have rarely used this "power of the purse" to limit
or end U.S. involvement in conflicts, but over the past 25 years
they have passed laws that effectively limited military deployments
in conflicts in Lebanon, Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo.
"Lawmakers always decide the scope of military operations,
either by accepting the commitment as it is or by altering its
direction and purpose. In a democratic republic, that decision
legitimately and constitutionally resides in Congress," Louis
Fisher, a constitutional law expert, told the Senate Judiciary
Committee in January.
"The framers of the Constitution deliberately structured
the powers so there would be clashes [over war powers] and to
make sure neither [Congress nor the White House] would go it alone,"
Susan Low Bloch, a constitutional law expert from Georgetown University,
told the Washington Times.
Following a presidential veto, lawmakers will have to consider
a new war-funding bill and decide what to do about urging the
withdrawal of troops.
--Compiled
by Adnaan Wasey for NewsHour Extra
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