by hilzoy
From the Washington Post:
“President Bush would veto the new Iraq spending bill being developed by House Democrats because it includes unacceptable language restricting funding, White House press secretary Tony Snow said Wednesday morning.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Snow said of the bill: “There are restrictions on funding and there are also some of the spending items that were mentioned in the first veto message that are still in the bill.””
The quick version of the bill (i.e., the one you’d get from the media) is: this bill funds the war for two months, after which the President has to submit a report on the Iraqis’ progress towards meeting various benchmarks. (He doesn’t have to actually certify that the Iraqis are making any actual progress; he just has to submit a report.) The President might not like either provision, but I honestly can’t see how either can be viewed as a good reason to veto the bill. If the President does veto it, I think he runs a very serious risk of being seen as the unreasonable one (as, in fact, he will be.)
The longer version of the bill is below the fold. But I can’t see how it helps his case either.
I have skimmed the bill in question. The full text is here (pdf); a good summary is here. A lot of the extraneous spending from the previous bill has been stripped out and put in a separate bill. Here (from the summary I just linked; having skimmed the bill, I think it’s accurate) is what remains:
“$6.2 billion for international assistance (including food aid) for Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa, and others
$1.7 billion for military construction related to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan
$1.8 billion for veterans’ medical care
$3.1 billion to fully fund Base Realignment and Closure
$2.25 billion to improve homeland security
$6.8 billion for Hurricane Katrina recovery
$663 million for pandemic flu
$400 million for LIHEAP [LIHEAP is the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program — hilzoy]
$396 million to fund the short-term SCHIP fix [SCHIP is the State Children’s Health Insurance Program — hilzoy]
Minimum wage and associated tax relief provisions
Restrictions on the closure of Walter Reed”
Do any of these seem like a good reason to veto a spending bill to you? Me neither. Personally, I would love to hear the President explaining why the inclusion of money for veterans’ health care, or for that matter an increase in the minimum wage, constitutes a reason to veto funds for the troops.
But what about what Tony Snow calls “restrictions on funding”? The President has to report to Congress on Iraq’s progress in meeting various benchmarks (also listed in the summary I linked above.) I believe these are all benchmarks the Iraqi government has itself adopted. And the President said last January that he would hold the Iraqis to their word:
“A successful strategy for Iraq goes beyond military operations. Ordinary Iraqi citizens must see that military operations are accompanied by visible improvements in their neighborhoods and communities. So America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.
To establish its authority, the Iraqi government plans to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq’s provinces by November. To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country’s economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis. To show that it is committed to delivering a better life, the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion of its own money on reconstruction and infrastructure projects that will create new jobs. To empower local leaders, Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year. And to allow more Iraqis to re-enter their nation’s political life, the government will reform de-Baathification laws, and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq’s constitution.”
The bill provides that a vote on extending funding beyond July will take place after the President makes this report. Neither the vote nor the additional funds are contingent on his reporting that the Iraqis have met these benchmarks, or are even making progress in doing so. All he has to do is make a report. (For those of you who want to read the actual bill, this section starts at the bottom of p. 42 of the pdf.) Some restriction. Can it possibly be worth a veto? No.
What are the remaining stumbling blocks? Well: the bill bans the use of funds “to establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq” (p. 22), or to “exercise United States control” over Iraqi oil assets. It prohibits the use of these funds for torture (p. 23.) It has a few other provisions — one allows people to designate someone other than his or her spouse, parents, children, or siblings to receive his or her death gratuity, which I gather has been a problem for some military personnel who wanted to designate e.g. stepchildren (p. 28); I’m glad to see this. Likewise, I’m glad to see that the bill requires that DoD inspect all military medical facilities, and all facilities for service members on medical hold or holdover personnel, see that they meet acceptable standards, and report on how they are correcting any deficiencies (pp. 28-31.) But none of this seems even remotely worthy of a veto either. (I mean: personally, I think it’s all good. But even if I didn’t — if I had some strange animus against the stepchildren of people who die in combat, or was in favor of leaving wounded veterans in substandard facilities, I can’t see vetoing this bill over such things. And I would love to hear Bush explaining how he has to veto the bill because it prohibits using the funds for any violation of the Convention Against Torture.)
The one remaining set of provisions is what the summary refers to as “the Murtha troop readiness provisions.” There provisions are on pp. 38-41 of the bill (OCSteve: these details are for you 😉 ). There are three of them, and they each take the following form: (a) Congress finds that it is Defense Department policy that X. (b) No funds shall be used in violation of X, although (c) the President can waive this requirement on a case-by-case basis, if he submits to Congress an explanation of why the national security requires it. The three values of X are the following:
(1) “units should not be deployed for combat unless they are rated ‘‘fully mission capable’’.” (p. 38)
(2) “Army, Army Reserve, and National Guard units should not be deployed for combat beyond 365 days or that Marine Corps and Marine Corps Reserve units should not be deployed for combat beyond 210 days.” (p. 39)
(3) “Army, Army Reserve, and National Guard units should not be redeployed for combat if the unit has been deployed within the previous 365 consecutive days or that Marine Corps and Marine Corps Reserve units should not be redeployed for combat if the unit has been deployed within the previous 210 days.” (p. 40.)
So: no funds can be used to deploy forces unless they are ‘fully mission capable’, or for longer than 365 days (210 for Marines), or if they have not had 365/210 days out of combat. But these requirements can be waived by the President if he explains why the national security requires it.
I could see the President making a case for a veto if the readiness requirements couldn’t be waived. But since they can be — since all this really requires is that he own up to the fact that a lot of the units he’s deploying are not, in fact, fully mission capable, or rested, and that some of them will be deployed for longer than they should be — I don’t really see this asa winning hand for him either.
The House bill is not my favorite approach. (I prefer Olympia Snowe’s bill, which requires withdrawal if the Iraqi government has not met its own benchmarks within four months.) But I honestly can’t see how Bush’s threat to veto it does anything other than make him look unreasonable.
And that’s significant. Consider, by analogy, the 1995 government shutdown. Then, as now, what happened was that Congress appropriated money, but did so via an appropriations bill that the President found unacceptable, and therefore vetoed. What made the public turn against Newt Gingrich and the Republicans in Congress was not the fact that they were solely responsible for the shutdown: they weren’t. It was the fact that they, not President Clinton, were perceived as being the unreasonable ones: the ones who were insisting that it was their way or the highway. Threatening to veto money for the troops because you don’t want to have to give a report to Congress, or to have to explain why you’re sending troops into combat when they are not combat-ready, or because it only provides money for two months and you’d rather it gave you four, seems to me like a perfect way of repeating Gingrich’s mistake.
these details are for you
Works for me. I have no issues with those provisions. Hell, I support them at this point.
My only concern is that Petraeus says he can’t run the military on a 2 month budget, which makes sense. (I had suggested 3 months previously, but had not considered how contracts work etc.)
Thanks for the analysis, hil. Are you sure you’re not a lawyer?
Bush simply can’t get away with declaring that bill after bill after bill is unacceptable, unless it’s exactly the bill he wants. He doesn’t have the support and the war doesn’t have the popularity. The only card he has is to attempt to cow the Democrats into giving ground unilaterally.
Also, this video (h/t dkos) seems quite timely and newsworthy.
Bravo President Bush! The Democrats have put themselves between a rock and a hard place. He should veto any bill they pass if it deviates in the slightest way from his original proposal. This gives the Democrats a no-win choice: either they capitulate completely or they force President Bush to use emergency executive funding authority to rescue the troops from running out of ammunition in the middle of battle. Either way they face total humiliation and sideline themselves completely from any role in governing throughout the rest of the congressional term. Aw shucks, it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving bunch!
Works for me, too.
But then, I’m not the President, and George W. Bush IS. And George W. Bush is the one who has made “my way or the highway” the fundamental mantra of his entire Administration – not to mention the whole Unitary Executive/Decider-in-Chief/above-the-law pretensions which it’s really unlikely, imo, they are going to easily give up, if at all. Sad for them; sadder for the country.
With the Iraqi government taking a 2 month vacation, it doesn’t look like they’ll meet any benchmarks any time soon.
Cheney is supposedly in Iraq to deliver the message that they shouldn’t take that vacation. Let’s hope his approval ratings are higher over there.
Steve: looks like Cheney carried off that little mission with his usual tact and finesse:
Uhh, nabalzbbfr: you might want to do a little more research before posting those lame The-Public-Will-Turn-On-Defeatist-Democrats trollposts: it seems like pressure on the Administration isn’t just for Democrats anymore .
Clown.
Uhh, nabalzbbfr: you might want to do a little more research before posting those lame The-Public-Will-Turn-On-Defeatist-Democrats trollposts: it seems like pressure on the Administration isn’t just for Democrats anymore .
Very lame on your part. The title of the article you link to says it all: “G.O.P. Moderates Warn Bush Iraq Must Show Gains”, just some wobbly-kneed rinos. Not to mention that it appears in the New York Pravda.
emergency executive funding authority
IMO this pretty much outs you as a fake wingnut. That and the Pravda comment. The “deviates in any way” bit is just the cherry on top.
I thought it was the initial ‘Bravo President Bush’ line. Starting the comment off with that is simply trying too hard.
It’s like a very, very Poor Man’s Giblets!
…I miss Giblets 🙁
On which note: it has been a while since felixrayman trolled here…
Folks, this guy is also a commenter at Unqualified Offerings, and front-pager Mona says she knows him and he is not a spoof, a fake, or exaggerating — he really thinks and talks this way.
In short, DNFTT.
Phil, the really scarey part is not that he really thinks and talks this way, but a good 20% or more of the country does the same.
Especially if the loony standard usually lies between 1 in 10 and 1 in 8 of the population ;-(
I assume that ’emergency executive funding authority’ means ‘ignore the constitutional limits on what Bush is allowed to do.’
Bush has already told us that he wants to be dictator. He just doesn’t understand that he has proven that he isn’t competent to even be president.
As for the recent calls that surfaced regarding the Iraqi house of deputies, I think this attitude is crude and unacceptable
This I do have a serious problem with. Everything at this point is dependent on a political solution. How many more Americans will die because you want a 2 month vacation? Are you (Iraqi politicians) trying to squash the last little bit of support I have for this thing?!?
On the other hand, by taking a two month vacation and avoiding such things as the oil law they won’t make the situation worse.
Maybe it’s their version of going on strike.
OCS, would you prefer that they do what the VP is asking, don’t adjourn, but instead have sessions on those few days when a quorum can be found?
I’m sure you’d like to see them enact legislation that represents a final and comprehensive settlement of the various communal disputes. You may as well wait for them to organize a parade of unicorns.
This government is not capable of resolving this situation at this time. In that context, a vacation just lessens the burden on our guys to provide security to Iraqi politicians, and cuts down on meaningless theater.
I think the thing is that it would be super-humiliating if Dick Cheney flies in, tells you to cancel your vacation, and you instantly comply. The Iraqi government sees it as particularly important that they not be perceived as American puppets.
I have absolutely no idea what sort of gentler diplomatic measures might have been used to try and persuade the parliament to ditch their vacation without it looking like the Americans were behind the idea. Maybe they tried 100 different ways and Cheney’s visit was a last-ditch attempt, although I’m not inclined to give this administration the benefit of the doubt in matters of diplomacy and discretion. But I can understand why it would simply be unthinkable for the Iraqi legislators to be perceived as kowtowing to Dick Cheney.
But this all brings us back to a very fundamental point – as long as the Iraqis perceive the U.S. occupation as open-ended, which is certainly the impression Bush gives when he rejects any and all conditions, there’s simply no urgency for them to pursue a political reconciliation. You might think they wouldn’t need any extra motivation, but just look how they behave in practice. There’s simply no impetus towards a resolution.
CC: You may as well wait for them to organize a parade of unicorns.
Then why the insistence (not you, in general) on legislative benchmarks? Are we setting benchmarks we know can’t be achieved just as excuses? Organize a parade of unicorns. When you can’t do that we have justification to pull the plug…
Oh, and we get to determine whether they are really unicorns or just ponies with a sugar cone strapped to their head…
force President Bush to use emergency executive funding authority
Where is that in the Constitution?
Charles I thought he had emergency executive funding authority to rebuild the Royal Navy–try running “Charles I” and “ship money” through a search engine. That didn’t work out too well for him . . .
The drafters of the Constitution certainly did not intend the president to have powers unmentioned in the Constitution and unavailable to the King of England.
emergency executive funding authority
aren’t the all spending bills they’ve used for Iraq in the past already classified as “emergency funding” ?
I’m still wondering what “emergency executive funding authority” means.
Back to the post. Has anyone actually asked the president what the offensive spending provision is? The Post quotes Tony Snow as saying that those provisions were mentioned in the veto statement, but that statement is pretty vague: “the legislation is also unacceptable for including billions of dollars in spending and other provisions that are unrelated to the war, are not an emergency, or are not justified. The Congress should not use an emergency war supplemental to add billions in spending to avoid its own rules for budget discipline and the normal budget process. War supplemental funding bills should remain focused on the war and the needs of our men and women in uniform who are risking their lives to defend our freedoms and preserve our Nation’s security.” If Congress stripped out the LIHEAP provision, it’d be hunky-dorey?
Then why the insistence (not you, in general) on legislative benchmarks? Are we setting benchmarks we know can’t be achieved just as excuses?
I may be mistaken, but the legislative benchmarks are only one of three types of benchmarks (the others being security and economic), so it is not so much an ‘insistence’, but a balanced set. Also, the legislative benchmarks were first put forward by the President, so the insistence is simply holding the president to the consequences of his own proposals.
The WaPo Jan 27 had this
The benchmarks for Iraqi political reform are a central pillar of Bush’s new strategy to turn around the unpopular war. He has said that he is relying on al-Maliki to reduce sectarian violence and make hard political choices, but has not spelled out the consequences if al-Maliki fails.
link
Hoist, meet petard…
Where is that in the Constitution?
It’s an emanation from a penumbra. Conservatives believe in that stuff now.
OCS, there are plenty of people out there still willing to argue that I (and other opponents of the current policy) can’t prove that there won’t be unicorns. If only we all believed in them strongly enough.
Really, I agree that acheivement of legislative benchmarks are possible only in a theoretical world, not the actual Iraqi parliament. Although I suppose if the members were really scared of an AQM takeover, they’d find a way to do enough to keep us in the game.
Has anyone actually asked the president what the offensive spending provision is?
I think the thing is, nobody takes him seriously on this point, because every single Reupblican supplemental included this kind of extraneous crap too. It’s just an excuse, so whatever. Try to pin him down and he’ll just point at random.
Is it possible that this is Karl Rove’s exit strategy? Bet that the Dems will not submit a bill without some sort of conditions, veto them all because of the conditions, and along about August start pulling the troops out quickly? When things fall apart, as seems most likely, blame it on the Dems who “refused to fund the troops.” That would give the House Repubs a year for the voters to forget about things before the next election.
LJ, CC: Fair enough.
Endgame anyway. al-Sadr now has a majority in parliament.
A majority of Iraqi lawmakers have endorsed a bill calling for a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops and demanding a freeze on the number of foreign troops already in the country, lawmakers said Thursday.
…
The bill would require the Iraqi government to seek approval from parliament before it requests an extension of the U.N. mandate for foreign forces to be in Iraq, al-Rubaie said. It also calls for a timetable for the troop withdrawal and a freeze on the size of the foreign forces.
Game over. I certainly agree that if the Iraqi government does not want us there we need to get the heck out. See ya.
Petraeus says he can’t run the military on a 2 month budget
He says he can accomplish something with the escalation of 20-50,000 additional troops for the next year, too. He’ll say whatever meets the needs of the bosses. Doesn’t mean it’s true.
OCS, thanks for that. The best news I’ve seen since ‘Webb wins,Dems retake Senate’.
@Michael Cain: No. Troops are not leaving while Bush is in office, barring a helicopters-on-roof, cut-supply-lines debacle.
OCS — Maybe vacation isn’t such a bad idea after all!
Petraeus says he can’t run the military on a 2 month budget
Because he can’t make plans, or because his contractors want bigger orders? As to the first, he’s in the same position most ordinary people are: I don’t know for a fact that I’ll still be earning a salary tomorrow, let alone 2 months from now. I make plans anyway, and deal with unexpected shortfalls if and when they come. As to the second, I find it hard to believe he can’t find someone willing to sell him bullets or whatever on a relatively short-term basis. It shouldn’t take too long to replace suppliers, given that the Administration has freely ignored the usual open-bid requirements. In short, this sounds like bs.
One of the benchmarks is definitely not on Bush’s “unacceptable” list: The new oil law.
I would not exclude the possibility that the Iraqi MPs want to use their vacation to avoid passing this ultra unpopular (in Iraq) legislation that both parties in Washington are pushing.
Hartmut: this ultra unpopular (in Iraq) [oil] legislation that both parties in Washington are pushing
Legislation which is now criticized by one of its principal authors.
How many businesses do you know that will take a 2 month contract to set up shop in a place like Baghdad? And if they are willing, aren’t they going to require a premium, since they would have to cover start up and shutdown costs in two months, rather than over a year or more?
What about a 6 month contract?
And what does that say about plans to leave in 6 months from any particular date?
I know the answer.
Take advantage of the main weaknesses of Bush and the GOP.
Create a bill declaring Bush to be the Greatest Wartime President Evar, and which also includes provisions to get us out of Iraq, and to fix other abominations Bush has set in motion.
I can’t see that being veto’d or voted down by Republicans.