Edit: this post intends to focus on Congress blocking/refusing to pass an appropriations bill. This post is not intended to cover circumstances where Congress explicitly passes legislation designed to de-escalate the conflict by withholding funding in the absence of troop draw-down. Apologies for the confusion (and thanks to Tom Wright for catching that)

There was an interesting post on DKos just yesterday about de-funding the Iraq war. The diarist had found and read a long article titled "Funding 'Non-Traditional' Military Operations: The Alluring Myth of a Presidential Power of the Purse". The author was Col. Richard Rosen, who was once the Deputy Legal Advisor to the Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs as well as heading up the Army's JAG school. Big time credentials, and the title sounds appealing. "Myth"? Was Dennis Kucinich right? Could the Dems simply de-fund the war?

Unfortunately, not really. Kinda, but not really.

The paper finds that

the article considers the President's options when no statutory funding authority exists to sustain an operation and concludes that his choices are four-fold: (1) the President can seek Congressional sanction for the operation; (2) the President can abandon the operation; (3) the President can direct the use of a reimbursable funding mechanism, or; (4) if national security interests are sufficiently critical, the President can spend the money in the absence of an appropriation and hope either that Congress ratifies the action or that he has adequate capital to withstand the resulting political maelstrom.

Now, to clarify:

f a situation is sufficiently grave and an operation is essential to national security, the President has the raw, physical power -- but not the legal authority -- to spend public funds without congressional approval, after which he or she can either seek congressional approbation or attempt to weather the resulting political storm.

My bold, obviously.

So here's the situation. If we defunded the war, that could cause the Pres to stop spending on it and start an immediate draw-downn. Indeed, in theory, de-funding should end the war. However, that doesn't necessarily have to happen. Given Bush's track record, I'd argue its extremely unlikely to happen. Instead, he'd invoke his unitary executive BS, and exercise his physical power over the Treasury, and the war would continue on. Perhaps funded more on the cheap, but that would be a bad thing, no? If the Pres got stingy and then blamed it on the Dems, that could get real ugly.

On the other hand, it would also present the most clear rationale for impeachment if we ever did reach that point. But is impeachment possible? I literally don't know. What are the procedural hurdles? What are the votes needed? Do the Dems have them?--I'm unclear on how many votes they have in the Senate (isn't one Dem currently in the hospital and not serving? What's the deal with that?). If we could safely assume that not a single Republican Senator nor Joe Lieberman would vote to impeach, would the Dems have enough?

And how long does this is all take? If the Congress simply did not approve anymore funding for the war from here on out, when would it run out of money and the Pres run into clearly un-Constitutional waters? How long from that point would it take to impeach and remove him? And beyond that, how long from then would it take to impeach and remove Cheney?

This is the worst-case scenario, IMO. What it would take to end the war before a Dem President is sworn in could be really ugly. If Bush starts running the war illegally, but on the cheap, and then uses the late military pay checks and such as a political club to hit the Dems while they hold hearings on impeachment...that could be bad for the troops, for Iraq, and for the Dems. That's real risky.

But it's that or continue to work on getting 67 total votes for a withdrawal bill.

If we're gonna throw this stuff around, like Kucinich did last night, lets not oversimplify the issue and muddy the waters. Who's interests are really served by creating a lot of false expectations of Congress, if this simply isn't feasible?

Oh yeah, also, the article includes and the Kos diarist helpfully excerpts multiple historical precedents for this type of spending:

Who did it? George Washington, in suppressing the Whiskey Rebellion. Thomas Jefferson in 1807, in responding to the capture of the American frigate Chesapeake by the British warship H.M.S. Leopard. Abraham Lincoln, at the outbreak of the Civil War. Calvin Coolidge in 1926, to provide relief from a hurricane to farmers in Florida. None claimed the expenditures were authorized in any way, shape or form. But all made them, on their own orders, with the Treasury's compliance.

It's these actions that led Col. Rosen to include that fourth option among the president's choices in the face of a refusal by Congress to fund his operations. There's more at work here than legality. There are issues of physical control.

Thoughts? Any insight into impeachment proceedings?