Dem caucus hands Pelosi her first defeat
The House's new, radical speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has been dealt a black eye by her own caucus.
Moderate Steny Hoyer (D-MD) has clobbered ethically ambiguous Iraq cut-and-run advocate John Murtha (D-PA) for the position of Majority Leader despite Pelosi's heavy-handed support of Murtha.
HT: Real Clear Politics
ADDENDUM: Scrappleface give its take here.
Regrettably, the committee chairmanship two which "Murtha" refers is likely to ba Appropriations, where he can do all kinds of mischief to the war effort.
Comments
Jeff G
Cutting funding for a program is one tool designed to balance power between the first and second branches of government. Congress is allowed to appropriate money to the army for a maximum term of two years (I have no idea if they actually abide by this).
Representatives are also chosen every two years. The new congress--which might reflect new public sentiment towards a war--must take action and appropriate more money or the army will eventually run out of bullets. This would be like a "pocket veto" of the war. If the new congress fails to act, the army is automatically defunded in two years.
Jeff G
Cutting off funds in the middle of a war would be a wholly unconstitutional meddling in the power of the Executive to wage a war already authorized by Congress, an egregious violation of the separation of powers.
Except under circumstances so extreme that they don't come close to applying here, it would also me morally close to treason.
It is a fact that the constitution intends that funding for the army will run out in two years automatically unless congress specifically passes new appropriations legislation. Congress does not even have to act and funding will be cut off. Congress has to affirmatively consent to paying for the army every two years.
How do you account for the requirement of periodic affirmative consent to fund the army if the congress cannot choose not to give that affirmative consent?
Jeff G
Yes, appropriations is certainly a power the legislative branch has. So is the declaration of war- which, tacitly, the Congress exercised in its authorization of the President to wage war, whatever the language might have been.
But there is no Constitutional authority for the Congress to conclude peace, whether by surrender or otherwise! I'd like article and section on the periodic review thing, btw. If it's there, it's clearly an Eighteenth Century arrangement with wholly disastrous implications for the Twenty-First.
Your suggestion destroys the balance of powers, and gives the Legislative Branch a dominant role. Sure, it has the power of the purse. But here we have a case of wielding it in such a fashion as to undercut the Exectutive's
perogative to prosecute a war the Legislative Branch has already authorized!
Is the Executive Branch a coequal branch of the Federal government, or not?!
And even if a Constitutional case could be made, it still would border on treason!
Article I§8
The Congress shall have power to ... raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;
Congress can only ever fund the armies two years in advance. Unless the Congress again provides more money, it will run out.
Interestingly, the same restriction is not given to navies.
...To provide and maintain a navy;