Over the last couple of years, Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) has been one of the chamber’s least progressive on foreign policy. It’s why it came as such a surprise to see the senator, who has only supported toothless measures in the past, raise the specter of a funding cut-off yesterday.
Congress should look at cutting off funding for the Iraq war if Senate efforts to change the role of U.S. troops in the battlefield fail, Sen. Ken Salazar said today.
Salazar, a Colorado Democrat, previously has not supported Congress using its ability to stop war payments in order to force President Bush to change direction.
While in Iraq over the weekend, Salazar said, some servicemen and women told him that they wanted Congress to cut off funding.
That last point is particularly striking. The usual conservative line is that lawmakers can’t even consider using funding measures to force the president’s hand, because it would endanger the troops. But in this case, Salazar noted that it was troops he spoke with who recommended the idea to him. It’s unlikely Salazar even brought it up — he’s never expressed any support for this policy in the past.
To be sure, Salazar is applying conditions to his position. He said he would only advocate cutting funding “if it could be done in a way that it’s not going to harm our troops in any way…. If that could somehow be done then we ought to take a look at it.”
That strikes me as a rather common-sense approach. No one, anywhere, has suggested a funding cutoff that would put troops at risk. As mcjoan noted, “Obviously, the troops understand that, or they wouldn’t be telling United State Senators that defunding is a good idea.”
For what it’s worth, Salazar isn’t the only one talking about this.
Over the weekend, at Sen. Tom Harkin’s legendary steak fry, Barack Obama stepped up with the line that a lot of activists have been wanting to hear.
Obama signaled Sunday he would only support a future Iraq funding measure if it included a deadline.
“We are going to bring an end to this war and I will fight hard in the United States Senate to make sure we don’t pass any funding bill that does not have a deadline,” Obama told the crowd.
The NYT report had an even more direct quote from the senator: “No timetable, no funding,” Obama said. “It is time to bring this to an end.”
That isn’t a change in policy for Obama — he voted against the last spending bill because it lacked a withdrawal timeline — but the senator had not yet indicated how he would vote moving forward.
That leaves Hillary Clinton as the only top-tier Dem who has not yet indicated how she’d vote on Iraq funding. As Eric Kleefeld noted, Clinton told Iowans, “Are you ready to end the war in Iraq and bring our troops home, as safely and responsibly as possible?”
Stay tuned.