295-123 – House rejects Libya war authorization

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Fred Stiening

Now comes the vote to cutoff funding – a ruse to pretend to cutoff funding without actually cutting off funding.

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3 Responses to 295-123 – House rejects Libya war authorization

  1. Art Stone says:
    June 24, 2011 at 2:13 pm

    The House has rejected the Boehner supported ruse to cut off funding without cutting off funding. This is all symbolic however, since the Democratic controlled US Senate won’t pass it.

    • prboylan says:
      June 26, 2011 at 11:35 am

      Lost somewhere in all the news reporting on this story is the fact that Constitutionally, the Federal government cannot spend money without the voting approval of the House of Representatives. The President and the Senate can’t pass a spending bill on their own. So if the House is actually serious about stopping the flow of money for making war on Libya, all they have to do is stop passing spending bills and debt extensions. Anything else is political smoke and mirrors.

      It appears that the new members of the House (including those put in by the tea party) have already learned how to dance the Potomac two-step. Get elected by main-street conservatives, quietly vote like big government liberals when you get to Washington, then go home and tell your constituents that you had no choice- you had to vote that way “for the good of the nation.”

      • Art Stone says:
        June 26, 2011 at 4:59 pm

        Another part of the problem is the military has a supply of arms. They can turn over 100 Tomahawk missiles to NATO and that isn’t a cash expenditure, so the House can’t readily stop that. When the military says they need money to buy replacements, then it gets to be problematic to say “no”. There are 100 different ways to evade Congressional oversight.

        While the House has the power to spend, it also isn’t a unilateral power. The Senate also has to agree on spending bills and subject to a Presidential veto… So unless there is 2/3 support in the Senate to revoke spending, it won’t happen. The only way to do that is to attach the “no spending on Libya” as a rider to some other bill the President has to sign.

        Taking it to the courts and clarifying what “war” is and whether the War Powers Act is enforceable is the most obvious path – but it carries the risk the court will weaken Congress. On the other hand, having Congress run the military is not a good idea. The real answer is to not elect a person who can’t be trusted to be Commander in Chief.

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