Fun congressional procedure

On Matt's question about the Iraq spending bill and defunding the troops: As I understand it, on appropriations matters if the president vetoes a budget Congress usually passes a continuing resolution that allows government services (in this case the Department of Defense, I suppose) to operate until a new version of the spending bill is passed or the continuing resolution expires. This isn't required, but is incredibly common. And is a de facto way for the president (or the Congress) to avoid charges of abandoning troops in the field.

Comments

[superdestroyer]

I belive that the FY2007 DoD budget has already been passed. What Congress has just passed in a supplemental to fund all of the things that were not in the original budget (those budget items included in the POM cycle). If the supplemental is vetoed, it just leaves the DoD witout the funds for the extras. Then the DoD can move fund around within certain parameters.

What will happen with a veto is that a lot of budgets will be frozen in order to keep Iraq operations going.

[Brian]

Thanks for the clarification.