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Four Ways To Stop the WarWhat Congress could do—if it dared.

By Emily BazelonPosted Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2007, at 5:41 PM ET

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Jacob Weisberg argued that Congress won't stop Bush's surge. John Dickerson wondered if the increase in troops will hurt McCain's campaign. Fred Kaplan explained why Bush still hasn't changed his strategy. He also contended that Gen. Petraeus can't save Iraq.

4. Set a time limit.
Congress could pass a law requiring that the president withdraw or redeploy troops according to a set timetable, Georgetown law professor Marty Lederman urges. He invokes the June 1973 law, which gave Nixon an Aug. 15 deadline for ending the fighting in Cambodia and Vietnam by saying no money could be spent on combat after that date. Nixon vetoed an early version of the bill, but in the end he got out on time. This wasn't exactly an act of great congressional self-assertion since it came at the tail end of the war. But it was something, and perhaps the current Congress could impose time limits at an earlier moment, when it mattered more.

Needless to say, the White House wouldn't like this one, either. But presidential commander-in-chief powers appear to trump congressional war powers in large part because presidents say they do and lawmakers let them get away with that claim. Congress will only find out what it can do about Iraq by trying to do something.

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Emily Bazelon is a Slate senior editor and an editor of DoubleX.

Photograph of President Bush on Slate's home page by Evan F. Sisley-Pool/Getty Images. Photograph of Sens. Joe Biden and John Kerry by Alex Wong/Getty Images.

COMMENTS

Remarks from the Fray:

There's a strategy missing here:

Step 1 -- pass the "pay as you go" rule, which states that any new spending must be offset with corresponding cuts in spending and/or increases in taxes.

Step 2 -- announce that, starting with the next budget, the war will no longer be funded -- as it has been -- with emergency spending bills but will be made part of the budget. As new spending, it must be offset. Congress will fund the war exactly as Bush wishes but...he must offset the expense.

Since the budget outside of defense, Medicare, and Social Security is already cut to bare bones anyhow, Bush must therefore choose to:

A) cut national defense, or
B) cut Social Security, or
C) cut Medicare, or
D) raise taxes.

Any one of these will put at least one major constituency on the warpath.

The beauty of all of this is that the Democrats cannot be accused of turning their backs on the soldiers in combat. They will not defund the war. They will simply force Bush to fund it in such a way that the costs take effect now, whereas heretofore the costs have all been foisted off on our children and grandchildren.

--the_slasher14

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