Think Progress

Bush Plays Politics With Soldiers Pay

Yesterday, the House passed a revised version of the defense policy bill, authorizing $696 billion in defense spending, including $189 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress had already passed this bill in December, but was forced to take up the measure again after President Bush issued a "pocket veto" of the bill on Dec. 28. Though the President had not expressed concerns with the bill earlier -- and in fact campaigned vigorously for its passage -- Bush suddenly changed his mind over the recess after the Iraqi government worried about a provision allowing victims of state-sponsored terrorism to sue the state, which could leave the government liable for abuses from Saddam Hussein's reign. The Iraqi government threatened to withdraw $25 billion from American banks if the President signed the measure. The bill Bush vetoed in December included a 3.5 percent pay-raise for soldiers, and the veto also held up "some bonus programs for airmen."

NOT A POCKET VETO: According to the Constitution, the president must either sign or veto every bill that comes to his desk. Though Bush is quite familiar with the traditional veto, he needs to brush up on the law governing the use of the pocket veto. If the president does not act on a bill for 10 days after it arrives on his desk, and if during that time Congress adjourns, the bill dies -- a situation known as a "pocket veto." In this case, the Senate had never adjourned over the holidays, continuing to hold "pro-forma" sessions throughout December. If these sessions were enough to block recess appointments from the President, they were surely enough to show that the Senate had not adjourned and to allow Bush to send the bill back to Congress for reconsideration. Though the House had adjourned over the winter break, "it ha[d] designated its clerk to receive communications from the White House, including veto messages, meaning that bill return was possible." If a bill can be returned to Congress, it cannot die with a pocket veto. "In misusing his veto power," Robert Spitzer, a political science professor at SUNY Cortland, explained, "Bush was attempting to grab a power for himself and his office that the Constitution's framers emphatically and repeatedly denied to the president: a nearly unlimited, absolute veto."

WHITE HOUSE'S FEARMONGERING: Bush's veto was not only legally questionable, it was deeply hypocritical as well. Throughout November, the White House continually bullied Congress to quickly pass the defense authorization. It threatened to veto the bill -- and hold Congress responsible for canceling soldiers' pay raises -- if lawmakers attached any troop withdrawal deadlines. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said that if Congress didn't pass the bill Bush demanded, "the Army and Marine Corps are immediately forced to begin shifting funds between accounts in order to keep operations running. And the Pentagon will soon be forced to send furlough notices for as many as 100,000 Army and Marine Corps civilian employees at bases around the country." "At the Pentagon, the spokesman, Geoff Morrell, said that officials had shifted $4.5 billion from other accounts to keep war operations going, but that the coffers would soon run dry. 'The Army now is on course to run out of operations and maintenance money in early February,' Mr. Morrell said. 'The Marine Corps will run dry in early March.'" The Pentagon released a chart suggesting that the Army would cease to function if Congress did not act promptly. "They are scaring people," Rep. John Murtha (R-PA) said of the White House's bullying tactics. "They are scaring the families of the troops. That's what's so despicable."

BUSH PUTS IMMUNITY ABOVE SOLDIERS' PAY: Congress passed an appropriations bill that kept the armed services well-funded and gave soldiers a 3.5 percent pay raise -- greater than the increase Bush had wanted. Yet once Congress left for the holidays, Bush made an about-face and declared his objection to the bill. "The Administration should have raised its objections earlier, when this issue could have been addressed without a veto," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said. By vetoing the bill, Bush effectively prioritized the Iraqi government's desire for immunity over the well-being of the troops. Yesterday's compromise agreement "grants the president wide authority to waive any provision of the section on lawsuits by terrorism victims as it relates to cases involving Iraq. But it also urges the administration to negotiate with Iraq 'to ensure compensation for any meritorious claims based on terrorist acts committed by the Saddam Hussein regime.'" The bill passed the House 369-46 and is expected to clear the Senate next week. Yesterday, former Bush political adviser Karl Rove accused Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) of playing "chicken with our troops" by "voting against vital funding for our men and women in uniform in a time of war." In fact, it is Bush -- through a legally dubious maneuver that delayed funding and pay raises -- who toyed with the soldiers.

The research team that brings you The Progress Report and ThinkProgress.org needs spring interns! Click here for more information.

The number of abortions has "plunged to 1.2 million a year, down 25% since peaking in 1990," according to a new report by the Guttmacher Institute. Pro-choice advocates noted that women "may be avoiding unwanted pregnancies, thanks in part to the morning-after pill, emergency contraception that is sold without a prescription to women 18 and older."

TEXAS: Texas is the biggest carbon polluter in the country.

MARYLAND: State is taking steps to comply with Real ID.

HEALTH CARE: "Several states and communities are moving to provide universal health coverage for their residents, but a federal law is blocking their efforts."

THINK PROGRESS: Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff permanently installs hand-picked agency staffers, "overextending his influence" after 2008.

CROOKS AND LIARS: Fox News host Bill O'Reilly falsely claims that "there's not many" homeless veterans.

BRENDAN NYHAN: Norman Podhoretz, a proponent of more wars in the Middle East, asks, "What's a Kurd, anyway?"

TAPPED: Pastor praised by President Bush charged with perjury in sex scandal.

"I have nothing that we've agreed to or lined up."
-- Former Republican Mississippi senator Trent Lott, 11/28/07, on his plans after retiring from the Senate

VERSUS

"John and I'd talk about the idea of getting together and forming a bipartisan firm, for years we kind of joked about it, and then it just seemed like it was time for us to see if we could do this."
-- Lott, 1/16/08, on his lobbying plans with former senator John Breaux.