The Hill, 8 Sep 2014 – President Obama is pushing congressional leaders to authorize a broad counterterrorism relief fund that could be used to support operations against Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria.
Doing so might allow the White House and congressional leaders to avoid a tough vote to either authorize or fund military action before the midterm elections and still achieve the “buy in” the president has said he wants from Congress.
The White House cautioned that the president has not made a final decision on whether to expand military operations against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). As a result, no final decisions have been made on how operations could be expanded.
The following day, Obama is to address the public on his plans for ISIS, which over the past month has executed two American journalists while threatening the United States.
Earnest sidestepped questions on whether the president could ask for separate emergency funding explicitly for operations against ISIS, saying he did not have “any sort of funding request to preview.”
“Unless we’re talking about a very specific order from the president, it’s hard to talk in very specific terms about what we want Congress to do,” Earnest said. “But as a general matter, what I can say is that the president is interested in their buy-in, is interested in a congressional debate, and is interested in consulting closely with the leaders in Congress so that they feel brought into this process and they feel like the partners that they actually are as the elected representatives of the American people.”
More generally, Obama believes that it is “beneficial to our foreign policy” when the U.S. “can demonstrate a united front across party lines,” Earnest added.
Over the weekend, Obama told “Meet the Press” that he was already “confident that I have the authorization that I need to protect the American people.”
Earnest said the White House hadn’t taken a position on legislation that would strip the citizenship or revoke the passports of Americans who join ISIS.
Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle have called on the president to do more to outline his strategy for confronting ISIS, although leadership on both sides of the aisle have so far avoided calling explicitly for a vote.
In a statement over the weekend, McConnell said Obama “needs to present this plan to the Congress and the American people, and where the president believes he lacks authority to execute such a strategy, he needs to explain to the Congress how additional authority for the use of force will protect America.”
“If the president is prepared to engage Congress with a strategic plan to protect the U.S. and our allies from ISIL, I believe he will have significant congressional support,” he said.