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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (4662)	10/26/2005 11:09:06 AM
From: Dale Baker	Respond to of 541674

In point of fact, Congress does tell the executive how to run the agencies to the extent that conditions and instructions and regulations are attached to all the funding that executive agencies receive, and those agencies are accountable to Congress for spending those funds in accordance with the wishes express in Congressional appropriations. In Iraq, Bush seems to have spent the funds pretty much how Congress intended, with some notable instances of fraud and corruption along the way. Many of those cases have been prosecuted with more to come, no doubt. As a general rule money always comes from Congress, with all the string they attach.

To: Ilaine who wrote (4662)	10/26/2005 12:29:04 PM
From: Mary Cluney	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 541674

I don't care whether a person is a Democrat or a Republican. Either what they say makes sense or it doesn't. You have an extensive SI trail. From what I have read, it does not come across that way. Point one. Congress declares war. You don't think Congress declared war in Iraq, so we're already in difficulty having this conversation. Whether you like it or not, most people in Congress are patriotic. If the President goes to Congress and ask to go to war, Congress will tend to give the President the benefit of the doubt. We assume the President has looked at all the options and have decided that we must go to war right away - otherwise we will have to respond to a "mushroom cloud". If you are a Congressman, you can not vote against that. The President has a lot more information than you do. If it turns out that the decision was made on false pretenses and that more valid information was suppressed - the person to blame for that has to be the President. That is the way it goes. The President has the final responsibilty. Point two. The President wages war. He's the Commander in Chief. And he is the Executive, so runs the agencies. Congress doesn't tell the President how to run the agencies. For the most part that is true. However, the framers of the Constitution put in checks and balances so that the President does not have unlimited powers. The point of Lawrence Wilkerson speech was that Congress enacted legislation (the 1947 National Security act and several amendments) to limit the power of the President as a result of FDR actions during WWII. Although things workd out during WWII, a benign dictatorship was not what the framers of the Constitution had in mind.