Don't Tie the President's Hands on Iraq
By Bluey Posted in Featured Stories | War — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
My colleague Andrew Grossman writes at the Heritage Policy Blog about a new letter circulated on Capitol Hill about the Iraq supplemental bill:
A letter faxed yesterday to Congressional leaders urges House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to strip patently unconstitutional provisions “designed to tie the President’s hands” from pending supplemental appropriations bills.
The letter is signed by a dozen lawyers and law professors specializing in the Constitution and national security–including former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese and Todd Gaziano, Director of Heritage’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.
After reviewing the war powers granted Congress under the Constitution, the letter stresses the limitations placed on those powers. It notes that Congress may not “dictate operational commands,” and warns that Congress would be crossing that line if it tried to impose timetables or benchmarks governing deployment decisions or attempted to place conditions on funding that substantially interfere with operational decisions that can be made only by the Commander in Chief.