I don’t know whose idea it was, but there is a very smart Democrat (or maybe it was a group of them) in Washington. I have not heard any of the pundits say this, but the Emergency Funding Bill for the Iraq war is brilliant.

Now, some folks are crying about the small percentage of the money that is going toward what might be called “pork”. They claim the Democrats are starting the spend portion of their signature “tax and spend” policy. My answer to that would be that even if the funds included in the bill for things other than the war were added only for the purpose of recruiting support for the measure, “So what?” I think that in this case the end justifies the means. And I don’t believe the government is doing anything else that approaches the level of waste that funding this unnecessary war clearly is.

Why is this money allowed to be left out of the budget and called “emergency” funding anyway? The President knows that he is going to need funds for the war effort every year. It seems to me that “emergency” funding should be reserved for unexpected occurrences, but be that as it may, it’s not the point of this piece.

No, the reason I call both the Senate and House versions of this bill brilliant is that they force the President to make a decision. If he vetoes the bill, then funding for the war is cut off without Senators and Congressmen taking that politically hazardous action. Mr. Bush is trying to spin this by claiming that Congress is forcing the veto, but that sounds like a “the devil made me do it” defense. I don’t believe that reasonable people will assign them the blame.

And if he signs it, the process of withdrawing US soldiers from this useless conflict is begun. It seems to me that the Democrats, and the country, win in either case. I must say that this is exactly the type of action that I imagined when I was writing in favor of a change in Congress this past fall.

Of course, I am also much heartened to see the various Congressional committees probing into the unsupervised Administration activities of the past six years. They say that “nothing disinfects like sunshine” and that is my hope for the current and forthcoming Congressional oversight hearings.

So, to the author (or authors) of the funding bill, I say, “Thank you. You are beginning to restore some of my faith in the American system of government.” As I said last fall, the primary purpose of having three co-equal branches of government is to ensure that one branch doesn’t become too powerful. There is not much danger that the Legislative branch could ever do that because of partisan political differences between its various members. But, for the last six years, the Chief Executive has been handed a blank check. Congress has been giving him everything he wants. That appears to have changed with a vengeance. By the way, this has not been a solely partisan effort. Some members of the President’s own party are supporting the Democrats in this.

Again I say, “Thank you”, to Congress. “You have gotten off to a good start. Now, if you can just do something about the way suspected terrorists are treated, and put some restraints on the Patriot Act and warrantless wiretapping.”