Dec. 8, 2007
Playing Chicken For War Funding
National Review Online: Sec. Of Defense Threatens To Cut Jobs To Force Congress's Hand
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Defense Secretary Robert Gates, center, accompanied by Army Maj. Gen. Robert Cone, commander, Combined Security Transition Command - Afghanistan, right, and an unidentified member of the Belgian military, left, arrives at Kabul Afghanistan International Airport, Monday, Dec. 3, 2007. (AP Photo/Pool)
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Defense Secretary Robert Gates, left, is introduced to soldiers by Army Maj. Gen. Mark Hertling, commanding general of Multi-National Division North, right, after arriving at Mosul Airfield in Mosul, Iraq, Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2007. (AP Photo/Pool)
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Play CBS Video Video Bush Presses For War Funding President Bush appealed to Congress to increase funding for the Iraq war, which House Democrats say has cost over $450 billion -- money that could be spent at home. Susan Robert reports.
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Video Senator On Iraq War Veterans "Only On The Web": Democratic Sen. Patty Murray says that the Defense Department and the VA have failed in their handlings of veterans returning home from war in Iraq.
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Video Bush: Get Me A Bill! "CBS News RAW": President Bush chastised the Democrat-controlled Congress for failing to pass a war funding bill that did not seek to appropriate funds for extraneous social spending programs.
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Interactive Battle For Iraq The government, the insurgency, key players, background and photos.
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Photo Essay Week In Iraq Photos A daily diary with scenes of the latest attacks and snapshots from the effort to rebuild a nation.
Before leaving town last month, House Democrats took yet another futile vote on withdrawal from Iraq along a set timeline. They won. They also knew that the $50 billion war bill they passed — laden with a modest withdrawal timetable — would never even reach the president’s desk for a signature. Sure enough, Senate Republicans made sure it never did.
This was all expected. But then it also put Congress on a collision course with an adversary who has everything to gain by standing firm — Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
Democrats argued that Gates already has authority to move some funds from the regular Defense spending bill to cover the war effort if he sees fit. In leaving town without providing the “bridge-funding” for Afghanistan and Iraq, they reasoned that Gates can submit to their conditions, or else he can wait a little while for his war money. “The days of a free lunch are over,” was how Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) put it. They did not expect any negative consequences.
But after futile meetings with Democrats on Capitol Hill, Gates announced Nov. 15 that there is only about $4 billion in the regular defense budget that can be easily shifted to the wars — enough to maintain operations for something like one week after the current supplemental runs out. Therefore, he said, if Democrats fail to provide a viable funding bill, and quickly, he would draw up plans to fund the war by freezing defense contracts and initiating massive layoffs in the Department of Defense. He said that for starters, he would take $3.7 billion from the Navy and Air Force payroll budgets, then $800 million more from elsewhere.
Democrats allege that this amounts to fear-mongering. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) said Monday that military funding will last until early March - which is technically correct, if the last dime is to be spent and all operations in Iraq and Afghanistan suddenly halted thereafter. In order to give a minimal cushion against that, Congress would have to appropriate funds very soon. Otherwise, layoff notices would have to go out before Christmas, according to Gen. Richard Cody, the Army’s vice chief of staff.
As they join the battle over supplemental war funding, Democrats have two clear disadvantages, and perhaps a third as well. First, the timing is terrible. Reid’s rebuttal of President Bush’s demand for money was that “All we ask for is some accountability — at least a strategy.” That made sense in February, when Iraq was really a mess. But the current strategy in Iraq is working much better than the old one, and so the argument is far less effective.
Second, Democrats will be fighting a rhetorical battle against officers in uniform over whether to cannibalize one part of the military to fund another. On Nov. 26, Gen. Cody ordered Army commanders to draw up their own “in extremis” layoff plans, which he called “absolutely necessary given the uncertain GWOT funding.” His office provided a memo for members of Congress two days later, stating that “The Army expects to exhaust all operation and maintenance (OMA) funds by February 23, even after considering a request by DoD to move over $4 billion from Navy and Air Force personnel accounts and the Army’s working capital fund.”
In order to find more money to shift to the war effort, the memo says, the Army is making plans to “warm base” its installations and commands to “minimal essential levels.” The memo also states that plans are being drafted to “furlough Army Civilians after mid-February; curtail or suspend contract expenditures; and discontinue all routine operations funded by OMA dollars.” The final budget-reduction plans that Cody ordered are due today.
There is a third possible disadvantage for Democrats in this debate. Gates may actually have some leverage over Congress in the form of Department of Defense earmarks. Republican Sens. Tom Coburn (Okla.), Jim DeMint (S.C.), and John McCain (Ariz.) wrote to Gates just before Thanksgiving that the regular Defense appropriations bill, already passed, “contains over 2,000 earmarks accounting for over $5 billion in wasteful spending.” Much of it pertains to un-requested weapons systems designed to help local economies in various states and congressional districts. The senators’ letter recommended that this money be redirected and used for the war.
Because most of the pork in the Defense bill was not included in the bill itself, but in the accompanying conference report, the three reform-minded senators argued that Gates is not bound to spend it on the earmarks. “As the Congressional Research Service [see page 2] has pointed out on a number of occasions,” they wrote, “‘Earmarks that appear in committee reports and the statements of managers do not legally bind agencies.’” So far, Gates has signaled no intention to dip into these funds, although he has replied to his correspondents that the idea is under consideration.
Over the recess, Democrats were sticking to their guns. “If the president wants that $50 billion released, all he has to do is to call the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, and ask him to stop blocking it,” Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D., Wis.) told reporters in an unusual recess press conference. And indeed, President Bush could simply go back on his heretofore consistent demand that funding be provided without a withdrawal timetable.
Yet standing at Obey’s side was Defense Appropriations Subcommittee chairman Jack Murtha (D., Pa.), who alone siphoned off $135 million in earmarks for his district, away from the legitimate defense-related expenditures in this year’s regular defense-spending bill. Several members of Congress - from both parties -- have similar investments in military pork that Gates could threaten if Democrats try to corner him. The administration could take advantage of this bipartisan addiction, claim the high ground against defense pork, and cause a rebellion against Democratic leaders in Congress, all at the same time.
By simply holding firm and insisting on their conditions until the money runs out, Democrats have yet another opportunity to bring the military to its knees and dictate the terms of a withdrawal. Many Americans would like to see this happen, even beyond the Democrats’ political base.
But given that Democrats were never willing to suffer the political consequences of such a move even when the war was going very badly, there is no reason to think they will carry through with it now. That is why Gates has picked this fight.
By David Freddoso
Reprinted with permission from National Review Online.
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Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
In Korea, we did not withdraw after 1953, and now we have South Korea instead of one big North Korea.
In Vietnam, the Democrat Congress cut off aid in 1974, and then the Soviet and China-supplied North Vietnamese crushed South Vietnam in 1975. We ended up with about 2 million Cambodians slaughtered, another million South Vietnamese put into horrific long-term prison sentences, where many died, and another million who became the boat people, so desperate to get out that they threw flimsy boats on the ocean, and many boat people died. And then another million became refugees after the initial wave of boat people. (It''s hard to get figures for the exact number of South Vietnamese that were executed.) On top of all this, it seems clear that the South Vietnamese would have been far better off becoming like South Korea.
So let me repeat. I was against the invasion, but we cannot undo the past. In all sincerity, if you think withdrawal will make things better, please explain how this will work. I''m willing to listen, but please do not tell me that the invasion was wrong. We agree on that. Tell me how withdrawal will ***save lives***. Thanks.
International Brian Online: Threatening Jobs In Order To Continue A War, We Can Do Quite Well Without Those Kinds Of Jobs, If They Only Exist To Continue War Crimes..
The Great Emperor Bush has so ordered!!!
SIG HEIL, BUSH!!!
As desperate as Hitler was in ordering Paulus not to surrender at Stalingrad, but sacrifice thousands of German troops, the Darth Bushits may callously put troops in dangerous situations to score political points.
We need to be vigilant against this possibility. And Congress should hang tough for once against the Tiny Texass Tyrant.
Robbing America''s legitimate defense needs for Bush''s ego-trip in Iraq should put everything in perspective, even for those loyal ''Bushies'' who''ve exhorted the rest of us to participate in their rape of another country at public expense.
democrats and republicans running the opposite way. RON PAUL is their WORST nightmare.
As they said in a movie;"The hard part about playing chicken is knowing when to flich." GWB has the playing chicken part down real good. The question is wheather he knows when to get out if the oppertunity presents itself. I suspect the answer is no. After all its ot his kids that are in danger of dying.
Bush could SIGN the funding bill that 77%+ of the electorate want.
I see in this morning''s news Bush has once again demonstrated the extent of his communications skills by giving homeowners threatened with forclosure the WRONG PHONE NUMBER for getting assistance.
The other WRONG NUMBER is that we have to live with this incompetent for another 409 days! Hopefully, next November, a great many of the 50% of you who voted for this failure in 2004 will have awakened from the contrived FEAR scenario the neo-cons lied you into.
All night long the NRO farmer heard screaming from the budget controlling Democratic donkeys that allowed themselves to be screwed to death by the Repub. chicken hawk.
The NRO farmer awoke the next morning to find GAO vultures circling over the apparently dead chicken hawk.
"You stupid, stupid chicken hawk. I told you that you would screw yourself to death", the farmer said.
Eyeing the overhead GAO vultures, the chicken hawk whispered, "Shush, I think they are coming down."
When the NRO waitress was asked how they prepare their chickens she replied, "We simply tell them they are going to die."
For the same reason the chicken hawks invaded Iraq.
- by johnshaft4 December 8, 2007 11:30 AM EST
- NRO, you want chickens? Then simply go to 1600 Penn. Ave. There you will meet a ''commander in chief'' who was a sissy cheerleader in college and protected Texas from the Viet Cong.
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See all 20 CommentsAlso, go meet the great white hunter Cheney who got five (5) deferrments.
Real "men", huh?