The First Fight: Funding the Escalation

David Sirota points me to this Arianna Huffington exclusive:

"Money is the only way we can stop it for sure." To this end, Murtha, the incoming Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, is planning to hold wide-ranging hearings, starting January 17th, that will focus on the depleted state of our military readiness , as well as contractor corruption in Iraq and Afghanistan. The goal is to turn the spotlight on how drained the military has become, and on how any talk of a troop surge is utterly irresponsible (as well as strategically misguided). "The public," he said repeatedly, "is already ahead of us on all this. He says he wants to "fence the funding," denying the president the resources to escalate the war, instead using the money to take care of the soldiers as we bring them home from Iraq "as soon as we can."

There are going to be plenty of fights happening over the next few years, which is why I'm not worried about bipartisan nonsense - there's just no common ground between, say, escalation and withdrawal.  I've talked to a few new Congressmen today, and all of them are clearly against the war in Iraq.  This Murtha move is new, and they hadn't heard about it yet.  It changes the debate around the supplemental budget, which is really the debate about the war and what we should be doing.

This is good.  People were ready to give Bush one last blank check, but the escalation has allowed progressives the opportunity to push back.  Bush overreached and is out of control, and it looks like the Democrats might stand up to him on the funding piece.  That's the last taboo for Congress, and it's one that should have dissipated long ago.

Tags: Escalation, George Bush, Iraq, Jack Murtha (all tags)

Comments

3 Comments

Re: The First Fight: Funding the Escalation

thank god it looks like some of our Congressmen are finally mustering up the courage to do the hard but correct thing on Iraq funding

by dal27 2007-01-04 10:28AM | 0 recs
Is it feasible?

On two bases, the legal and the political.

I'm not well informed on the hard, legal side of appropriations: I'd want to be walked through exactly how Murtha would propose to ring-fence expenditure (let's say, for FY08) in such a way that funds the troops out in Iraq properly as from October 1 2007 and at the same time avoids the possibility of a Bush end-run to boost forces in Iraq.

He's an old-timer in defense apps, and I'd be hopeful that his staff that will have nailed things like this down.

On the political side, the regime will be bound to run Dems curb funding to our troops in Iraq-type lines.

And - as has been patently clear since 03, the regime has had no qualms in screwing the troops right royally, even with an open check-book in Congress.

But - facts, shmacts - the Dems would need nimble footwork to combat regime propaganda.

On the other hand, if Murtha can close the deal on this, that would be a real achievement.

by skeptic06 2007-01-04 11:10AM | 0 recs
Re: The First Fight: Funding the Escalation

The first step in this needs to be to force Iraq and Afghanistan war funding to be accounted for like every other war the US has fought--as part of the DoD budget, not as a supplemental spending.  

by Professor Foland 2007-01-04 11:14AM | 0 recs

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