Just posted at The Nation by Ari Berman:
At a hearing on Iraq today convened by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Congressman Jack Murtha offered a preview of how he plans to reign in the Bush Administration, from the perch of his chairmanship of the Defense Subcommittee on the House Appropriations Committee.
Murtha announced his intention to use the power of the purse try and close US prisons at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, eliminate the signing statements President Bush uses to secretly expand executive power and restrict the building of permanent bases in Iraq.
And starting February 17, Murtha will begin holding “extensive hearings” to block an escalation of the war in Iraq and ultimately redeploy US troops out of the conflict. Murtha predicts that a non-binding resolution criticizing Bush’s expansion of the war would pass the Congress by a two to one vote. But he believes that only money, not words, will get the President’s attention.
Be sure to read the whole thing.
Murtha is quite right. The ONLY thing that will move Bush is to cut off the funds for escalation. In addition, we need a different plan, which has our troops pulling out of Baghdad, in particular, but other Iraqi cities as well. Baghdad is a sectarian slaughterhouse in which we have no business being involved. But since we’re staying until Bush leaves office, maybe if we weren’t in the cities we could go to the borders and stop the influx of weapons and enemies from flooding the civil war zone. But the thought or plan that we can change the outcome in Baghdad is simply ludicrous. When our troops are put in that zone, wait for the casualty rate to soar. Madness.
This made my morning. I’ve been waiting for someone of Murtha’s cred to get into a position of power to stand up to these bullies and their insane fantasies.
Congress needs to put a disclaimer at the end of every bill that says
” This is written to be law as is, with no interpretations by any other branches to supercede the legislative. Congress’s intent is The intent and the executive cannot add statements to create an intent of this law that is not here already established”.
I don’t get it.. My understanding is that if the money is a given through a supplemental process rather than a budgetary process than there is no oversight on how the money is spent. Congress can limit the supplemental with the intention to deny funds for certain projects or programs,but Bush doesn’t have to account once the money is allocated. Bush will just spend it how he wants and then go back to congress with his hand out claiming that the troops are being denied essentials and America’s combat readiness is impaired because Congress doesn’t care for the safety of our troops. It seems to me that it will just be more game playing.
No pun intended,but Congress has to stop beating around the bush and state that Bush has failed as a president, and that they are going to hold hearings with goal imposing some form of accountability for all the lies, deceits, the law breaking, and the intentional structuring of schemes designed to deny Congressional oversight and accountability to any authority.
Bush is not going to cooperate with Congress until he knows that the game is up, and Congress is determined to remove him from power. How about an impeachment advisory panel with subpoena power? That oughta make is ears perk up and get his attention.
Yeah!!!! Swami, an impeachment advisory panel is the very best idea I have heard.
Sorry to be the grammar/spelling police, but I have been annoyed lately to see how often ‘reign’ and ‘rein’ are confused. Kings reign; you rein in a horse. Spellcheck isn’t so smart, after all.