medicinal
03-04-2007, 06:18 AM
41 Democratic Senators can stop the war
by Joe Buck
Sat Mar 03, 2007 at 07:05:40 PM PST
It's been discouraging to watch the Senate try to get its act together to pass the most simple, obvious and toothless nonbinding resolutions. The Republicans are unified, and they have enough votes to tie the Senate in knots.
But what is often missed is that the war cannot continue without funding, and lots of it, and George Bush will soon need a supplemental appropriation to pay for it. That supplemental appropriation can't make progress in the Senate until 60 senators say that it can.
What this means is that 41 Democrats, if they hang together, can hold the supplemental appropriation hostage until the Senate as a whole agrees to whatever conditions they demand. More ...
Joe Buck's diary :: ::
Of course, the difficulty today is that most Senate Democrats lack the intestinal fortitude to stand up to the heavy criticism they would get from the Right Wing Noise Machine and its tools in the media. I think that the only answer to this is for us to turn up the heat considerably.
The target of anti-war protests should be Democrats. Democrats can stop the war, many would like to stop the war if they could find a risk-free way to do that. We all know that the Republicans will not listen. For that reason, we need to figure out a way to turn up the heat so high that it is more terrifying for a weak-kneed Democrat to give George Bush war money than for him or her not to give George Bush war money.
Ben Franklin told the other founders, during the dark days of the Revolutionary war, that if they could not all hang together, they would all hang seperately. 41 or more Democrats could get together and agree that they would adopt a common strategy, and vote on the details among themselves, and then all 41+ would vote that way on the Senate floor, even if some had personal reservations.
The Murtha approach is a bare minimum starting point: if we demand that no troops are sent unless they have adequate armor and training, and have had adequate rest, and that troops currently in the field do not have their tours extended, this will force the gradual reduction of the number of troops deployed. The Senate could also eliminate discretionary funds to the extent possible: get rid of those buckets of dollars that Bush can spend on his own, and make all appropriations very specific as to what they can be spent for.
If this is tried, Bush might try to play "chicken". If things drag on and there's no appropriation, the Senate can do the same thing it does when the budget is late, and issue emergency funding to barely keep things going for a week at a time, forcing the President to use up discretionary funds.
What if the Senate Democrats won't play? Then a variant of the Pottery Barn rule applies: you fund it, you own it. It's no longer Bush's war, and we'll have to resort to primary challenges against the capitulators.
by Joe Buck
Sat Mar 03, 2007 at 07:05:40 PM PST
It's been discouraging to watch the Senate try to get its act together to pass the most simple, obvious and toothless nonbinding resolutions. The Republicans are unified, and they have enough votes to tie the Senate in knots.
But what is often missed is that the war cannot continue without funding, and lots of it, and George Bush will soon need a supplemental appropriation to pay for it. That supplemental appropriation can't make progress in the Senate until 60 senators say that it can.
What this means is that 41 Democrats, if they hang together, can hold the supplemental appropriation hostage until the Senate as a whole agrees to whatever conditions they demand. More ...
Joe Buck's diary :: ::
Of course, the difficulty today is that most Senate Democrats lack the intestinal fortitude to stand up to the heavy criticism they would get from the Right Wing Noise Machine and its tools in the media. I think that the only answer to this is for us to turn up the heat considerably.
The target of anti-war protests should be Democrats. Democrats can stop the war, many would like to stop the war if they could find a risk-free way to do that. We all know that the Republicans will not listen. For that reason, we need to figure out a way to turn up the heat so high that it is more terrifying for a weak-kneed Democrat to give George Bush war money than for him or her not to give George Bush war money.
Ben Franklin told the other founders, during the dark days of the Revolutionary war, that if they could not all hang together, they would all hang seperately. 41 or more Democrats could get together and agree that they would adopt a common strategy, and vote on the details among themselves, and then all 41+ would vote that way on the Senate floor, even if some had personal reservations.
The Murtha approach is a bare minimum starting point: if we demand that no troops are sent unless they have adequate armor and training, and have had adequate rest, and that troops currently in the field do not have their tours extended, this will force the gradual reduction of the number of troops deployed. The Senate could also eliminate discretionary funds to the extent possible: get rid of those buckets of dollars that Bush can spend on his own, and make all appropriations very specific as to what they can be spent for.
If this is tried, Bush might try to play "chicken". If things drag on and there's no appropriation, the Senate can do the same thing it does when the budget is late, and issue emergency funding to barely keep things going for a week at a time, forcing the President to use up discretionary funds.
What if the Senate Democrats won't play? Then a variant of the Pottery Barn rule applies: you fund it, you own it. It's no longer Bush's war, and we'll have to resort to primary challenges against the capitulators.