David Sirota: Blank Check Democrats & The Danger of Becoming A Blank Check Movement

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http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/10/1104/

Blank Check Democrats & The Danger of Becoming A Blank Check Movement
by David Sirota

blank check: n. 1. A signed check with no amount to be paid filled in 2. Total freedom of action; carte blanche.

In this simple, two-pronged American Heritage Dictionary definition, we find the two major problems afflicting Iraq War politics today in Congress.

The House, you may know, is prepared to vote today on a new short-term Iraq War supplemental bill that includes so-called “benchmark” requirements. After roughly 60 days, the President would be required to submit reports to Congress measuring Iraqi progress in meeting basic benchmarks, and the Congress would then have to vote on whether to approve more war spending based on those reports. This solid proposal, which follows the solid proposal that Bush recently vetoed, is the most basic form of constitutional oversight, yet Republicans and a faction of Democrats are considering voting to strip these requirements out of the bill and thus making it into the literal definition of a blank check.

We shouldn’t be surprised that Republicans want to give the White House a blank check. Despite a highly publicized meeting yesterday where moderate GOP lawmakers supposedly told President Bush they didn’t support the war, the Republican Party is firmly for indefinitely continuing the Iraq War and at odds with the vast majority of the American people who want an end to the war.

It is the Blank Check Democrats, however, that raise the tough questions. Here we are six months after an election that delivered the Congress to the Democrats based on the American public’s desire to end the war. Here we are at a moment when polls show the public firmly supports the Democratic leadership’s effort to enforce accountability on the White House when it comes to the war. And yet here we are, once again at the mercy of a small faction of Blank Check Democrats threatening to essentially overturn the 2006 election’s mandate and give the big middle finger to the majority of the American people on the most important national security issue in a generation.

We will see today just how far these Blank Check Democrats are willing to go in undermining their own party and the will of the American public. But we will also see just how far Democratic leaders are willing to go in making their anti-war rhetoric legislative reality. Because remember - these fights do not happen in a vacuum, as much as the Washington pundit class would like us to believe they do. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and senior Democrats have many levers of power at their disposal, including committee assignments and re-election fundraising and support for primary challengers. Whether Pelosi uses these levers - and whether rank-and-file Democrats demand she uses these levers - will tell us a lot not only about the Democratic Party’s commitment to ending the war, but about it’s commitment to all the other promises America was given in exchange for its votes in 2006.

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