MSNBC: Obama adds funding, troops to ISIS fight
Meredith Clark of MSNBC reports on the fight against ISIS:
President Obama wants to expand the war against ISIS, and doing so could be one of the few actions that won’t trigger a fight with congressional Republicans in the final years of his term.
Obama sent a letter Monday to House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, requesting $5.6 billion to fund the war against ISIS. This move followed announcements last week that the number of troops in Iraq would double from 1,500 to 3,000 and that he plans to seek congressional approval for the ongoing fight against ISIS forces.
Now that the midterm elections are over, members of both parties can vote on authorizing the use of military force to fight ISIS without endangering their reelection prospects. Boehner said Friday that Republicans would work with Obama to craft a military authorization, but that they would wait to vote on such a plan until next year.
In September, 85 House Democrats voted against a proposal to arm Syrian rebel groups to fight ISIS, and Rep. Adam Schiff of California spoke out against Boehner’s plan to wait until the next Congressional session.
“Congress should never have recessed prior to the elections while a new war was getting underway, and it must not compound this abdication of its Constitutional duty by failing to take up a war authorization during the lame duck session,” Schiff said in a statement.
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By: Meredith Clark
Source: MSNBC