WASHINGTON -- The real deadline for Congress to provide more money for the war in Iraq is several weeks beyond the April 15 deadline cited by President Bush and Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
The Pentagon can take several penny-pinching steps without harming troop readiness or other dire consequences predicted by the Bush administration until Congress actually comes up with the money.
Mid-April is about when $70 billion provided by Congress for the war will run out. After that, Pentagon accountants will move money around in the department's more than half-trillion dollar budget to make sure operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are not disrupted.
The Army, Gates testified this past week, "will be forced to consider" altering training schedules for reserves and units to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as delays in repairing equipment and renovating barracks.
The steps under consideration include borrowing from training, maintenance, personnel and procurement funds set to be spent later in the budget year, which runs through September. They have become routine in recent years.
The money is repaid, usually with minimal disruption, when the president signs the war spending bill. But you might not realize that, given the recent rhetoric from the White House.
"If Congress does not approve the emergency funding for our troops by April the 15th, our men and women in uniform will face significant disruptions, and so will their families," Bush said March 23.
...Such criticism was scarce when the GOP-controlled Congress was tardy in providing war dollars last year. At the time, there was a warning about "serious impacts" if the money was delayed further, but it came in a little-noticed letter from the White House budget office. Congress ignored the warning and went on vacation.
...[T]here was no effect on troop readiness and training missions, nor delays in rotating troops out of Iraq. Instead, the Army froze civilian hiring, fired some temporary employees, stopped nonemergency travel and delayed purchases of information technology, Schoomaker said.
That is why many lawmakers view Bush's April 15 deadline more as a target date. The private signal many are getting from the Pentagon is that mid-May is when the money will be needed to avoid disrupting activities such as training missions.
"The president is once again attempting to mislead the public and create an artificial atmosphere of anxiety," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
Allow me to clarify that:
Harry Reid is once again attempting to mislead the public and create an artificial atmosphere of security. Reid is trying to sell Americans on that "What? Me worry?" parallel universe that Dems inhabit.
...Nonetheless, Democrats are a little nervous about leaving Washington on their long-scheduled Easter vacation without first delivering the $120 billion-plus Iraq spending bill.
...[The House] does not return until April 16. Even if a tentative deal is reached by then, getting it through the House and Senate and to Bush would take a week at a minimum. If Bush follows through on his veto, a new bill would have to be written and put to votes.
Does this sound like a fair and balanced hard news account to you?
To me, it reads like an editorial, trying to sway the reader to support the Dems and to push the reader to agree with the notion that the Pentagon should take "several penny-pinching steps" in order to get by.
Why should such steps be necessary?
Do we want the Army to freeze civilian hiring, fire temporary employees, stop nonemergency travel and delay purchases of information technology just to accommodate the Dems' political maneuvers?
Why not simply pass the necessary funding for our troops without demanding the screwing around and the "penny-pinching steps"?
What's more effective?
That all depends on your goal.
If you want to undermine the Commander in Chief and our national security, it's more effective to delay.
If you care about the long term security of the United States, it's far more effective to pass a clean supplemental funding bill quickly.
This lame article is nothing more than Dem propaganda.
Its sole purpose is to debunk the deadline and convince the public to ignore the Bush administration's call on Congress to quit playing games.
I don't care whether the deadline is April 15 or July 15 or October 15.
What the libs in Congress are doing is wrong.
They are bent on securing defeat in Iraq and sending a message to our enemies that America is weak.
Way to go, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and, to borrow David Obey's term, "idiot liberals."
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