Midterm Reality Check: Congress & War Policy

The terrorism threat is a long-term issue, and the representatives we elect today will shape tomorrow’s defense.

In 2006, the people sent a message to Congress for change in Iraq. It’s been a year since Democrats took control of Congress, and it’ll be another year until we elect a new president. Now, all of us are looking at where we’re going and where we’ve been. To measure the progress toward that change it’s essential to look at war policy and spending – and especially at war funding, where Congress has the clearest way to affect war policy, through the power of the purse.

Democrats have been trying to pass a law that would require a troop pullout, but their efforts have stalled in the Senate. Some say they should take away war funding until the Bush administration agrees to withdraw troops, but others say that such a decision could weaken and hurt soldiers. Further, there’s renewed debate about how the war is going, but most agree, intelligence is the best defense.

Spending on spies

Congress authorized spending of $43.5 billion in Fiscal Year 2007 to operate spy satellites, remote surveillance stations and the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.)

Historically, the intelligence budget has been made public only twice before: in 1997 and 1998, when the C.I.A. disclosed that its budget was $26.6 billion and $26.7 billion, respectively. Since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the Bush administration has refused to make similar disclosures, fighting legal challenges from several advocacy groups.

Senator Christopher S. Bond, Republican of Missouri and Vice Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, has argued that Americans have a right to know how and where the government is spending taxpayers’ money.

Money for defense but not war

Congress passed the fiscal 2008 spending bill on November 8, 2007, but the resolution doesn’t include any war funding. Pentagon would have to allocate funds from its regular budget to pay for war operations as a result, starting as soon as November 17, 2007. The spending bill does provide the Pentagon with $456.3 billion in discretionary spending for fiscal year 2008, 9.5 percent more than in fiscal 2007, but $3.5 billion less than President Bush requested.

The bill headed to Bush’s desk gives $11.6 billion for mine-resistant vehicles to defend U.S. forces in Iraq.

But Congress has not agreed to the $50 billion requested by Bush to fund the Iraq and Afghanistan wars until the end of December, 2007.

The bridge fund

Lawmakers are calling it a “bridge fund,” an emergency supplemental spending bill that would provide billions for Iraq and Afghanistan. Since all spending bills start in the House, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has offered the bridge fund, but has tied it to immediate troop withdrawals from Iraq, with a deadline of removing most troops by December 15, 2008.

In the new bill, Pelosi also takes care to reintroduce important elements of older bills which failed to pass, or were not properly enforced.

The bill incorporates language in legislation by Senator Jim Webb (D-Virginia), mandating that returning troops would stay home at least as long as their combat deployment. Webb, a powerful member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees and Veterans’ Affairs Committees, could be an important advocate for Pelosi’s bill in the Senate.

The legislation also includes a requirement that troops be fully trained and equipped before shipping off, favored by House Appropriations Committee and Subcommittee on Defense Chairman John P. Murtha, and a reinforcement of rules in the Army Field Manual that prohibit torture.

Under current law - Senator John McCain's (R-AZ) 2005 Detainee Treatment Act - torture is prohibited, but the law's provisions don't apply outside the U.S. military, meaning that the CIA can still employ "enhanced interrogation" techniques. When President Bush signed the bill into law he included a signing statement reserving the right to override the restrictions in the bill.

Some Republicans oppose the bridge fund bill because they don’t support a troop withdrawal. Some Republicans and Democrats don’t like the idea of linking money to policy change for fear that the troops could go without. Still other Democrats want greater pressure on the administration. Needless to say, the bridge fund faces an uphill battle.

Strategy

Before the election, Democrats want to come off as having done something to change war policy. Republicans want to maintain their reputation as “the party you want in power when there’s a war.”

In reality, not much is changing in Iraq because there’s disagreement in Congress and not enough of a majority on either side to create major change. 

With only a slightly more Democratic Congress and a Republican White House, stalemate isn’t a huge surprise. Democrats want enough of a majority in the next election to pull out of Iraq, but will they get it? Should they get it?

What do you think?

Is it time to start pulling troops out of Iraq? Should Democrats link troop withdrawal to war funding? Should the money spent on defense and intelligence be part of regular budgets rather than a supplemental budget which is a special request from the President?

Tell your representatives what you think!

 * Past Security Life Issue updates are always available on the Security Archives page.

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Update Posted on: 11/13/2007