Text 26490, 50 rader
Skriven 2007-01-25 21:39:00 av Jeff Binkley (1:226/600)
Ärende: Feingold
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I truly hope the Dems in Congress have the guts to pass a bill cutting off
funding.  Bush will veto it and the 2008 election is ours...

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http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0107/2478.html

Feingold Pushes Plan to Cut Off War Funds

By: John Bresnahan
January 25, 2007 06:57 PM EST



Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., has scheduled a hearing next Tuesday in his
Judiciary Committee subcommittee to explore whether Congress has the authority
to cut off funding for the U.S. military campaign in Iraq. The move comes as
Congress prepares to vote on a congressional resolution opposing President
Bush's escalation of the war.

Feingold, a fierce war critic, will force Democrats to consider an option many
consider politically suicidal: denying funds to the military and U.S. soldiers
to force a quicker end to the war. Democratic leaders have privately called on
members to restrain from cutting off funding and focus on congressional
resolutions condemning the Bush policy. The resolutions are nonbinding and
therefore symbolic.

Republicans "would like this debate to be as whether or not we are going to be
cutting off money for the troops," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently
told The Politico. "The logical conclusion is that a lot of things can happen.
But right now, the most important thing is to tell the president that what he
has done with the escalation is wrong. And that's what we are doing,
bi-partisanly."

Feingold, who chairs the Subcommittee on the Constitution, will question
several witnesses, including a Library of Congress official and legal experts
from Harvard, Duke, and the University of Virginia, on the issue. Senior Bush
administration officials have publicly argued that Congress' has no such right,
but Feingold plans to introduce legislation to force President Bush to American
forces out of the troubled country.

"Congress holds the power of the purse and of the president continues to
advance his failed Iraq policy, we have have the responsibility to use that
power to safely redeploy our troops from Iraq," Feingold said in a statement
released by his office on Thursday. "I will soon be introducing legislation to
use the power of the purse to end what is clearly one of the greatest mistakes
in the history of the nation's foreign policy."

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