A Possible Peril to Troops with a Delinquent Congress
By Marion Edwyn Harrison (12/12/07)
Objective, as well as subjective, opinions vary as to whether the United States should have fought terrorism by invading Iraq, overthrowing the Saddam Hussein dictatorship and now attempting to establish Iraq as a peaceful, mass-destruction weapons-free and democratic nation-state. One’s view aside, it rationally is difficult to argue that as long as American troops are risking their lives in Iraq Congress should forego appropriations timely and adequate to support our fellow Americans so assigned. Yet that is exactly what Congress has been doing - by the device of delay (which some probably figure is less politically risky than outright and obvious opposition).
Everybody even remotely cognizant of the functioning of the Federal Government knows that the Fiscal Year begins each year on October 1. Elementary accounting, commonsense and basic planning compel the completion of the Congressional appropriations process before October 1. That hardly bothers the 110th Congress.
What does Congress do when it cannot divert itself from political posturing and appropriating billions of dollars in earmarks for the favorite projects, usually back home, of those United States Senators and Representatives who are able to siphon off taxpayer dollars? It passes a so-called continuing resolution. A continuing resolution (unless the sum of money is increased or decreased) merely continues the sum appropriated for the fiscal year about to expire for the duration of the continuing resolution. Nobody in the Federal Government, including the Department of Defense (“DOD”) and the Armed Forces, accurately and safely can plan, for lack of knowledge as to how many dollars, coupled with who knows what restrictions and mandates, Congress will appropriate.
The current continuing resolution affecting our soldiers risking their lives and elsewhere will expire on December 14, 2007 - three days hence! And the 1st Session of the 110th Congress is soon to adjourn, the 2nd Session to convene in January, 2008. Thus, already Fiscal Year 2008 is in its third of twelve months. Imagine trying to run a business that way!
It’s obvious Congress has had plenty of time to appropriate for the October 1, 2007 - September 30, 2008 Fiscal Year. If one looks at a calendar and does a touch of elementary arithmetic, one finds that Congress has had since early February 2007 - about 308 calendar days (minus 70 days Congress could have been, but was not, in session).
Presumably the 110th Congressional Majority Leadership, rampantly irresponsible though it is, will do something before adjourning (to use a politically incorrect phrase) for the Christmas - New Year Holiday.
If Congress departs without enacting another continuing resolution or appropriating the bucks for Fiscal Year 2008 (which for procedural reasons may be impossible) DOD soon will be required to commence laying off some 100,000 civilian employees. These employees function for the purpose of supporting our uniformed military. Thus, our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, the war effort and our national security - as, of course, also those employees - all would suffer in some measure.
Sometimes Congress follows precedent - the wrong one. Last year Congress was 109 calendar days late in legislating what at that point (as now) had to be a supplemental appropriation for Fiscal Year 2007. What will the 1st Session, 110th Congress, get around to doing? And when?
Senate Minority Leader A. Mitchell (Mitch) McConnell, Jr., of Kentucky, on the Senate Floor yesterday summed up the appropriations fiasco in brief remarks:
“ . . . [W]e’re now a quarter of the way into the [2008] fiscal year. Reasonable, responsible people understand the time to get the work done is now.
“[The Senate] can keep going back and forth with the House [of Representatives], but that would only further delay our fundamental responsibility of getting these spending bills signed into law.
“Let’s protect the taxpayers’ wallets, fund the troops, and end this otherwise unproductive exercise.” [Emphasis supplied.]
Marion Edwyn Harrison is President of, and Counsel to, the Free Congress Foundation.
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