Cafferty on the war

The Democratic excuse has always been that they don't have enough votes to override a veto. Boo-hoo, my heart bleeds for you.

Yet in only 1 out of 40 attempts did it even get that far. In the rest it was the Democrats who backed down. Not because they didn't have enough votes - they have a majority in both houses. But because they couldn't get all of themselves to vote for the bill (even with additional help from antiwar Republicans), or backed down when confronted by Republicans.

Indeed, the one war bill this Congress did manage to pass was the one that gave Bush exactly what he wanted - more money to continue his war.

Instead, they should do what Kucinich has been saying all along: The war depends on funds which need to be allocated by Congress. No matter what side of the "unitary executive" claptrap you come down upon, the fact remains that the Congress controls the purse, and there ain't anything (short of scrapping the entire Constitution and starting over) that's going to change that.

They don't need to override Bush's veto.

They can send him all the bills they want containing pullout dates, conditions on funds, and the like. They have the votes to do so (and if Senate Republicans try to filibuster, it will be clear to all who is obstructing progress).

They can send him a new one every single day if they wanted.

And Bush can veto every last one of them.

And Congress needn't do a thing, because eventually the money that was last appropriated for the war will start to run dry, and without a positive action from Congress, no new money will be forthcoming.

And if the Republicans tried to slip one by and send Bush a no-strings-attached funding bill, Senate Democrats could filibuster. And they only need 40 votes to do that; last I checked there were 50 Democrats in the Senate (not counting Joe Lieberman of course).