# Posted 10:26 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

POWER OF THE PURSE: So far, the struggle for power in postwar Iraq has played out as a battle between the Pentagon on the one hand and a coalition of the State Department, the British government and the United Nations on the other.

But now there's another gunslinger in town who links it his job to play sherriff. They call him Congress. We learn today that

Congress has already rewritten the emergency request for $2.5 billion in reconstruction assistance that Bush submitted last month, with the Senate barring the money from use by the Pentagon. The House has insisted that it go through the traditional State Department aid agencies. "The secretary of state is the appropriate manager of foreign assistance, and is so designated by law," said Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz), a House Appropriations Committee member, expressing a view widely held across party lines.

While $2.5 billion may not sound like enough to warrant congressional concern, that isn't the point. When Congress wants to influence American foreign policy, it does so by taking advantage of its power of the purse. While the executive branch controls almost every aspect of foreign relations, the appropriations process is a bottleneck at which Congress can stop almost any initiative it deems undesirable.

For a concise and incisive overview of Congress' powers in the realm of foreign relations, see James Lindsay's "Congress and the Politics of US Foreign Policy."

In the process of conducting research for my doctoral dissertation, I have become well aware of how Congress can face down the executive no matter determined he is. Even though Reagan asked for negligible sums to aid the Salvadoran armed forces and Nicaraguan contras, Congress forced him to invest a massive amount of political capital in a battle that lasted throught Reagan's entire time in office -- and which he eventually lost.

Information -- distributing it, hiding it, interpreting it -- was the tactical focus of the interbranch struggle to dictate policy toward Central America. As today's WaPo report indicates, the same is true with regard to the Bush administration and the struggle over postwar Iraq:

Despite repeated requests for more information and for a meeting with Garner, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) said he and his staff have received only "inconclusive and not very comprehensive views" on Garner's plans. The Pentagon has refused requests from Lugar and other committees to meet with Garner. With Garner's team awaiting entry into Iraq, the Defense Department "has refused requests by the staff of the Appropriations Committee to brief us, and has its people sitting around a swimming pool in Kuwait drawing up plans," said a senior congressional aide...

In what members said was an unprecedented move, Bush asked for the $2.5 billion reconstruction fund to be appropriated to the White House itself, presumably to be distributed through the Pentagon. A memo prepared by senior GOP staff for the House Appropriations Committee noted that the arrangement would erect a "wall of executive privilege [that] would deny Congress and the Committee access to the management of the Fund. Decision-makers determining the allocation . . . could not be called as witnesses before hearings, and most fiscal data would be beyond the Committee's reach."

It's worth noting that the Bush administration has already provoked Republican congressmen to the point where they are willing to break ranks and oppose the administration's plans. It took Reagan quite a while to let things slip that far.

All in all, initial reports suggest that the Bush administration's well-known obsession with secrecy and awkward managment of legislative affairs will shape its approach to the occupation. (NB: Josh disagrees on the legislative affairs point.)

For the moment, it is unclear where the President himself stands on hte occupation issue. My guess, however, is that he will broker a compromise which favors the Pentagon.

As a matter of principle, I like to Congress win when the executive tries to undermine its oversight of foreign relations. But in this case, I think Congress favors an inferior policy while the secretive Pentagon has a much stronger case. So what is to be done?

Hopefully, the Pentagon will open up and give Congress the information that it both wants and deserves. The public deserves this information as well. There is every reason to believe that Congress will go along with the administration's preferred policy provided that the administration shows respect for congressional opinion.

If it doesn't there is good reason to believe that Congress will fight tooth and nail to stop the administration, regardless of the impact that such a conflict would have on America's interests abroad. When Congress feels that it has been slighted, it tends to put all practical concerns aside and focuses on punishing those who have slighted it. Assuming the White House fights back (as it did under Nixon and Reagan) the usual outcome is a compromise that is worth than either of the original policies under consideration.

In light of America's compelling interest in the democratic reconstruction of Iraq, the administration ought to work with Congress rather than against it. Congress has a long record of favoring democracy promotion, and there is every reason to believe that it will want to entrust that task to the Pentagon rather than those who support the United Nations. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion