{"id":12917,"date":"2007-09-18T10:30:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-18T14:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/12917.html"},"modified":"2007-09-18T10:30:00","modified_gmt":"2007-09-18T14:30:00","slug":"salazar-open-to-funding-cut-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/salazar-open-to-funding-cut-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Salazar open to funding cut-off"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> of a funding cut-off yesterday.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

While in Iraq over the weekend, Salazar said, some servicemen and women told him that they wanted Congress to cut off funding.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, “Obviously, the troops understand that, or they wouldn’t be telling United State Senators that defunding is a good idea.”<\/p>\n

For what it’s worth, Salazar isn’t the only one talking about this.
\n
\nOver the weekend, at Sen. Tom Harkin’s legendary steak fry, Barack Obama stepped up with the line<\/a> that a lot of activists have been wanting to hear.<\/p>\n

Obama signaled Sunday he would only support a future Iraq funding measure if it included a deadline.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The NYT report had an even more direct quote from the senator: “No timetable, no funding<\/a>,” Obama said. “It is time to bring this to an end.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, Clinton told Iowans, “Are you ready to end the war in Iraq and bring our troops home, as safely and responsibly as possible?”<\/p>\n

Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12917\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}