JUST POSTED ON TAP ONLINE: THE HALF-TRILLION DOLLAR SOLUTION. Professor Bruce Ackerman and Congressman David Wu propose a way for Congress to force the president to bring his war to an end: place a fixed cap on his Iraq appropriations:
"Fanaticism," George Santayana famously observed, "consists of redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim." There is nothing which sobers the mind more than a fixed budget.
Even the administration concedes that Congress has the constitutional power to cut off funds. The challenge is to use this power creatively -- both protecting the troops and requiring the president to end his war on his watch. The key point is to establish the principle that President Bush is responsible for leading America out of the impasse he created. A budget cap will also create a framework encouraging Congress to focus on the big picture, rather than engage in constant criticism of particular strategic decisions. We have fixed our ceiling at a level which assures that all troops will leave Iraq by inauguration day of 2009. But our proposal provides a framework for a debate over a more rapid redeployment: if Congress wanted a quicker termination, it need only impose a rider to the next appropriations bill that specified some smaller number (say, $450 billion) as the appropriate budgetary ceiling for our tragic misadventure.
This seems a more profitable focus than a series of debates over the next round of strategic maneuvering that will follow the president's surge. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is already assuring us that if the surge doesn't work, he is pondering the next Plan B. But Plan B is really Plan Q, or maybe Z. It is time to call this endless series of rationalizations to an end.
--The Editors
