Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Chuck Schumer

Politico:

Senate Democrats are divided over whether President Bush has legal authority to bypass Congress as he seeks an agreement with Iraq that could keep troops in the country for years to come.

Most House Democrats, as well as the party’s presidential candidates, are determined to make Bush’s pursuit of a long-term “status of forces” agreement with the Iraqi government a new focal point of their battle with the administration over Iraq policy.

They are adamant that Bush should not be able to make such an agreement without congressional assent — a green light they intend never to give him.

But at least some Senate Democrats, while opponents to both Bush and the Iraq war, said the constitutional issue at stake is more complicated.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who sits on the Judiciary Committee, said she believes Bush probably does have the power to strike such a deal if he wants.

“He would have authority, I think,” said Feinstein. “Based on what I know, he would.”

Many of her Democratic Senate colleagues vigorously disagree.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, had a one-word answer as to whether Bush had the legal authority he is claiming: “No.”

And Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the administration in a letter that the proposed status of forces agreement obligates the United States to use force to protect Iraq’s security — the kind of commitment he says the Constitution requires Congress to bless.

“A commitment that the United States will act to assist Iraq, potentially through the use of our armed forces in the event of an attack on Iraq, could effectively commit the nation to engage in hostilities,” Biden wrote. “Such a commitment cannot be made by the executive branch alone under our Constitution.”

The debate among leading Senate Democrats, while revolving around competing interpretations of executive branch prerogatives, is hardly academic.

After congressional Democrats were thwarted in 2007 in efforts to use the appropriations process to force an end to Bush’s Iraq engagement, the anti-war movement has lowered its sights. In January, a coalition of anti-war groups led by MoveOn.org said they were shifting their focus from the funding fight to opposing Bush’s long-term plans in Iraq, trying to ensure that a departing president does not tie the hands of his successor.

Feinstein evidently does not see the executive power argument in the same drastic terms as some of her anti-war allies. An aide to Feinstein explained: “That type of agreement usually doesn’t come to the Senate for ratification. It is not considered a treaty; it’s considered an executive agreement, and the new executive can make a new agreement or back out of the old one.”

While arcane in its nuances, the Democratic debate over the status of forces agreement is potentially significant. That’s because similar divisions among Democrats — over whether to force a drawdown, not to mention whether to authorize the war in the first place in 2002 — have consistently allowed Bush to pursue his Iraq aims with few limitations.

Some Democrats have labored to make their position clear.

Asked in a hallway interview what he thought about the status of forces debate, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who like Feinstein sits on the Judiciary Committee, said of Bush, “I don’t think he’d have to come to the Senate for an agreement specifically on that.” He added that “obviously there are funding and other issues” where Congress could assert the implementation of any agreement.

On Monday afternoon, however, a spokesman for Schumer said he misunderstood the question and now agrees with Leahy and Biden that Bush needs congressional approval for any commitment of U.S forces beyond his term.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), reflecting the strong views in her caucus, agrees with this. “He’s talking about principles that say that we will take responsibility for protecting the Iraqi government from threats, internal and external,” she said last week. “That’s a treaty. That must be approved by the Congress of the United States. So we have to watch him carefully, the president carefully, because he wants this war to go on and on and on for a very long time to come.”