And the reason it's important is that it also gives us a window into one of the other hot issues of the moment: how far will Bush go to stonewall Congressional oversight?
That's an issue in which, once again, most Congressional Democrats assume that the game will be played within the confines of the old rules, and that the president "wouldn't dare" instruct the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia not to prosecute anyone the Congress voted to hold in contempt for failure to comply with its subpoenas, for instance. Or that he "wouldn't dare" pardon (for all intents and purposes) Scooter Libby so far in advance of the end of his term. Or that he "wouldn't dare" to simply "defy" an Act of Congress.
I think that makes it a fair question for those of us who are concerned to ask whether there's a "Plan B" -- not for Iraq, but for Congress, in the event that Bush should "dare" to do any of these things the old rules of politics made us so sure he wouldn't.
And if you don't want to talk about it in terms of the contentious questions concerning oversight and/or impeachment, what other crisis can we see looming here? Looking at the list above, we can see that Bush has threatened to veto the Homeland Security, State-Foreign Operations, Financial Services, and Interior-Environment appropriations bills. That's one third of the year's 12 regular appropriations bills, and two-thirds of the appropriations bills that have managed to pass the House so far (5 out of 7 if you include the first Iraq supplemental).
Now, consider what happened with that Iraq supplemental. Anyone observing closely could see that the Congress provided the funding, and Bush rejected it. And yet, Bush successfully convinced even many Congressional Democrats that they would be blamed for not "funding the troops in the field." With Bush already threatening to veto half of the FY08 appropriations bills, who do you think will be blamed for that other thing Americans supposedly hate more than anything, the government shutdown?
So, what's the "Plan B," folks? What are we doing differently to avoid taking the blame for these vetoes? What are we doing differently to avoid having to bend to Bush's increasingly ridiculous demands in exchange for his signature?
UPDATE: Note, too, that if Bush vetoes half the appropriations bills, that creates a rather serious raft of busy work for Congress right about... oh, I'd say, September or so.
Gee, I hope nothing important is coming up in September that should have more of our attention than this.
crossposted from dailykos.com
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