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The Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 required the President to submit an economic plan or budget to Congress, where they could alter certain amounts of money are sent to, but cannot change the total level of spending. It wasn’t until Nixon’s presidency and the economic tension between him and a Democratic Congress that the Congressional Budget Act of 1976 was established. This piece of legislature organized the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) who helps estimate revenue, expenditures, as well as lay out a plan for the upcoming fiscal year. The Congressional Budget Act of 1976 also included a process called reconciliation that allows controversial issues regarding the budget to be limited to 20 hours of debate thus reducing the chance of a filibuster. Other details included are pork, or money and jobs brought back to representative’s districts and programmatic requests as well as rules making sure that the budget is passed without unnecessary delay.

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Current Event: after Justice Scalia died in 2016 the Senate declined Obama's nominations of a new Supreme Court justice. They decided to wait for a republican president (Trump) for a conservative nomination.

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Definition: passed by Congress in 1973; the president is limited in the deployment of troops overseas to a sixty-day period in peacetime (which can be extended for an extra thirty days to permit withdrawal) unless Congress explicitly gives its approval for a longer period

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The department of defense sent 400 more troops consisting of Rangers and a Marine artillery unit, to help with the war against ISIS.

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"The exact numbers and locations of these forces are sensitive in order to protect our forces, but there will be approximately an additional 400 enabling forces deployed for a temporary period to enable our Syrian partnered forces to defeat ISIS in Raqqa," Colonel Dorrian added.

The military strategy that is emerging in Syria parallels the approach that the United States has taken in Mosul, Iraq, and largely reflects the assumptions that guided the planning during the Obama administration.

In Mosul, the Americans and their allies have provided the air power, rocket fire, artillery and advisers, enabling Iraqi forces to move forward in their push to take the city's western half.

Similarly, in the case of Raqqa, the idea is that Syrian forces will do most of the ground fighting but that Americans will assist them with advisers and firepower.

The United States is already carrying out airstrikes in Syria and has deployed Himars surface-to-surface rockets in the northern part of the country. Before he left office, President Barack Obama approved the use of a small number of Apache attack helicopters, and they are expected to be part of the Raqqa operation, as well.

Now, Marine artillery is being added, along with logistical support and training and protection in dealing with improvised explosive devises.

Gen. Joseph L. Votel, the head of the United States Central Command, told reporters on Thursday that he was open to asking for more conventional military units if they are needed.

"I feel very comfortable with mixing Special Operations forces with conventional forces," General Votel said. "That is the way we fight."

One big hole in the strategy concerns which fighters will actually seize Raqqa. American commanders favor a mixed force of Syrian Arabs and the Kurdish Y.P.G. militia. But Turkey objects to arming the Kurds, a group it has denounced as terrorists.

The American military hopes it can mollify the Turks by making sure that the majority of the force that takes the city is Arab, and making clear that only local fighters will occupy the city after the Islamic State is driven out.

But Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee who recently visited Syria and Turkey, questioned whether these assurances would be enough to ease the concerns of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. His role is critical because he has allowed American warplanes to operate from the Turkish airfield at Incirlik and has sent Turkish troops into Syria.

"I'm not sure there's an understanding of how seriously Erdogan views this issue," Mr. McCain said in a Thursday hearing with General Votel.

"I think there's a possibility of an impending conflict between Turkey and the Kurds," Mr. McCain said.

Without providing details, General Votel responded, "We are trying to take actions to prevent that from occurring."

Turning to other regions, General Votel said he agreed the Afghan conflict was stalemated and supported the appeal from the American commander in Afghanistan for additional troops.

Regarding Yemen, General Votel said that he bore full responsibility for a January raid that was mounted to acquire intelligence about Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. One American commando was killed, and civilians perished in the cross-fire.

Mr. Trump has unwaveringly defended the value of the raid, but also told a Fox News interviewer that the operation was something the commanders "wanted to do."

Mr. McCain said that while the heroism of the Special Operations forces could not be challenged, the operation raised questions, including why the mission continued after encountering heavy fire and why the commandos had failed to capture any Al Qaeda operatives.

The American people, Mr. McCain said, need to be told the truth.

General Votel said that four to 12 civilian casualties resulted from the operation, providing lower casualty estimates than some analysts. After the hearing, General Votel acknowledged that United States commandos had hoped to capture some Al Qaeda operatives so it could interrogate them about the group's operations.

"We were trying to develop our understanding of the area and that includes the people as well as other materials," General Votel said.

Still, he told the lawmakers that he did not see the need for an additional government investigation of the mission.

In Iraq, as the fighting continued in Mosul, suicide bombers struck a village north of Baghdad as a wedding party gathered there, killing at least 26 people and wounding dozens, a government spokesman said on Thursday.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks late Wednesday, but suspicion has fallen on the Islamic State, The Associated Press reported.

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U.S. Is Sending 400 More Troops to Syria

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"The exact numbers and locations of these forces are sensitive in order to protect our forces, but there will be approximately an additional 400 enabling forces deployed for a temporary period to enable our Syrian partnered forces to defeat ISIS in Raqqa," Colonel Dorrian added.

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Current Event: Trump is 6 senate votes away from impeachment

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This article first appeared on the Brookings Institution site.
At some point in 2019 (if not sooner) a Republican Senator may walk into the Oval Office and say to President Trump: "Mr. President, we don't have the votes," at which point the Trump presidency will end in a resignation or a conviction in the Senate.

This scenario actually occurred forty-three years ago this summer when Republican Senator Barry Goldwater walked into the Oval Office and told Republican President Richard Nixon that they didn't have the votes in the Senate to save his presidency.

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Following impeachment in the House, a trial takes place in the Senate. Conviction requires two-thirds of the Senate and by my count there are already twelve senators who have shown a willingness to take on the president when they believe he is in the wrong.

If you add that to the forty-eight Democrats in the Senate (who have shown no inclination to work with this President), Donald Trump could be six votes away from conviction in the Senate.

Of course this assumes that the forces now in motion continue on their same trajectory and result in an impeachment vote. They are: the investigations into the Trump campaign; evidence of weakness in the Republican base ; historical trends indicating a possible Democratic takeover in the House; and, last but not least, defiance in the Senate. [1]

This last trend should be particularly worrisome for the president. Article I of the Constitution gives them the last word on the presidency. And yet instead of making friends in the Senate, Trump has done exactly the opposite.

After the Senate failed to pass his Obamacare replacement, Trump took to Twitter to denounce them as "fools" and "total quitters." That could not have gone over well with the senators who opposed him along the way. One of them, Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine), arrived home to an impromptu gathering of supporters at the Portland airport who applauded her vote against the president's replacement of Obamacare.

Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) was defiant after being called out by the president, saying " No second thoughts at all. None," after her vote against the president on health care. Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) has been none too pleased with the efforts to repeal Obamacare, insisting that it " does not go far enough in lowering premiums for middle-class families."

But perhaps the most high profile opposition to the president came from Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), who returned to Washington from his hospital bed to cast the dramatic and final vote killing the Republican replacement for Obamacare. After Trump, during the presidential campaign, ridiculed McCain's seven years in a prison camp in Hanoi, the Arizona senator showed he is clearly not afraid to take on the president.

Another Republican senator from the west, Dean Heller (R-Nev.) also felt free to criticize the President and vote against him on several key issues. Senators Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) have been vocal in their opposition to the president's budget-especially the proposed cuts in drug treatment programs.

Capito threatened to lead "a bipartisan group of my colleagues on the Appropriations Committee and in the Senate to reject those proposed cuts." They are part of the 18 Republican senators who voted against the Trump budget.

A second major setback for the president in the Senate was passage of a Russia sanctions bill that curtailed the president's freedom of action in adjusting sanctions-a clear signal that an overwhelming number of senators don't trust the president on Russia issues.

As a further reflection of that inter-branch distrust, there are two bipartisan bills in the Senate which would check the president's ability to fire the special prosecutor Robert Mueller looking into the Russia issue.

One is sponsored by Senator Thom Tillis (R. N.C.) and Senator Christopher Coons, (D-Del.) and the other by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.). Senator Graham has gone so far as to warn the president that firing Mueller would mark "the beginning of the end of the Trump Administration."

And then there is the man who used to be the president's closest friend in the Senate, Jeff Sessions, who endorsed Trump when no one else would and became his Attorney General only to suffer weeks of embarrassing insults from the President.

Senators such as Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have defended Sessions against the president, warning that if Sessions is fired there will not be a confirmation hearing for another attorney general this year.

Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has been a consistent thorn in President Trump's side, repeatedly questioning his foreign policy appointments and insisting in an op-ed, "Make no mistake, no matter who is president or what their party is, it is my firm belief that the president needs congressional authorization for military action, as required by the Constitution."

Finally, Senator Jeff Flake, (R-Ariz.) wrote an entire book accusing President Trump of abandoning conservative Republican principles. Flake is facing a tough re-election race, and his book Conscience of a Conservative (the same title used by his hero Senator Barry Goldwater 57 years ago), is either a Hail Mary play, a genuine attack on what Trump has done to his party, or both. In it he writes, "Never has a party so quickly or easily abandoned its core principles as my party did in the course of the 2016 campaign."

These 12 Republicans have no fear of the president. You could probably add Senator Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), who is up for re-election in 2020 and whose state also voted for Clinton in 2016. The president needs to start making friends in the United States Senate.

[1] On average, since the Truman Era, a president's party loses more than 28 House seats in his first midterm election. (In 2018, Democrats need to pick up 24 seats to win back the House.)

Elaine C. Kamarck is a Senior Fellow in the Governance Studies program as well as the Director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution. She is the author of " Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know about How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates ," " Why Presidents Fail And How They Can Succeed Again ," " How Change Happens-or Doesn't: The Politics of US Public Policy " and " The End of Government--As We Know It: Making Public Policy Work. "

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Trump is just six Senate votes away from impeachment. And Republicans are deserting him fast

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This article first appeared on the Brookings Institution site. At some point in 2019 (if not sooner) a Republican Senator may walk into the Oval Office and say to President Trump: "Mr. President, we don't have the votes," at which point the Trump presidency will end in a resignation or a conviction in the Senate.

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-The senate confirms key members of the executive branch, and nominations for federal courts. Much dispute in the Senate has come up because of it. Senators have a considerable say if the judge nominated is from their state. (senatorial courtesy).

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Current Event: Congress is doing a lot right now involving budget and government spending. The White House is seeking $7.85 billion for Hurricane Harvey victims in Texas and Louisiana. Also, the House Rules Committee is meeting to pass a bill that will trim spending across all agricultural programs.

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This article discusses if Trumps threats to "Rocket Man" in the U.N are allowed under the War Powers Act.

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During his address at the United Nations on Tuesday, President Donald Trump went further than he ever had before in threatening military action against North Korea. "If [the United States] is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea," Trump told the gathering at the U.N.'s annual General Assembly.

In issuing this threat, the president spoke as if he alone could determine the fate of tens of millions of civilians on the Korean Peninsula. He is wrong. Not only did the Founders explicitly give Congress, not the president, the power "to declare war," but the ground rules for war-making in the modern age as established by the War Powers Act of 1973 would prohibit this sort of unilateral action from the executive.

Indeed, Trump's threat triggers the act's requirement that he consult with the House and Senate before following through. If he refuses, this act of defiance would amount to an impeachable offense far more serious than any that Robert Mueller is reported to be currently investigating.

If Trump insisted on evading congressional prerogatives, this would constitute an impeachable offense.

To set the stage, it's worth considering the way in which the War Powers Act balances realism with a commitment to democratic deliberation.

Realism first: The act recognizes that, in the nuclear age, the president should not be required to consult Congress before responding to "an attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces." If Kim Jong-un did launch his missiles in the direction of Guam, for example, Trump would indeed be authorized to let loose "fire and fury" against North Korea.

But Trump has been asserting a far broader prerogative. At the U.N. on Tuesday, he also claimed unilateral authority to make war in defense of our allies. He does not have that authority.

On other occasions, he has threatened a pre-emptive strike unless Kim halted his entire nuclear initiative.

On such issues, the War Powers Act requires the president, "in every possible instance," to "consult with Congress before introducing" our armed forces into a "situation where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances." Lest there be any doubt as to the "imminence" of involvement in this instance, Gen. Robin Rand, commander of the Air Force's Global Strike Command, followed up Trump's speech by declaring, "We're ready to fight tonight." Emphasizing this imminence, he added: "We don't have to spin up, we're ready."

Under such circumstances, the War Powers Act requires the president to trigger a process of congressional consultation by notifying the House and Senate within 48 hours that there is an imminent prospect of hostilities. Indeed, the administration's lawyers understand this point perfectly well. When Trump ordered a military strike against Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime in April following a reported chemical weapons attack against civilians, these administration lawyers promptly sent the requisite notice, expressly noting that the administration was acting "consistent[ly] with the War Powers Resolution."

The president should take his own precedent seriously and trigger the consultation process immediately. Not only does the statute expressly include "imminent" as well as actual "hostilities" within its scope, but its demand for consultation makes even more sense in such "imminent" cases-since it will require the administration to make a sober case for a pre-emptive strategy at a time when Congress could intervene to call it to a halt if it were unpersuaded.

Moreover, the act establishes special procedures that enable Congress to impose limits on Trump's powers as commander in chief with great speed-after as few as three days of floor debate under some plausible relevant scenarios. Even if, in the end, the House and Senate refused to limit the president's authority, the final decision would be made after an open and democratic debate.

It is imperative, then, for the president to explain whether he intends to comply with the notifications requirements of the War Powers Act-and if not, why not.

If Trump chooses to ignore the act, it would have serious consequences even if we manage to avoid nuclear catastrophe this time around. It would allow the president to assume that he could engage in future acts of unilateral brinkmanship without concern for legal niceties involving the Constitution and the War Powers Act. If Trump does try to duck the issue, senators and representatives of both parties should forcefully bring it to his attention.

If he then insisted on evading congressional prerogatives, this would constitute an impeachable offense. It was precisely President Andrew Johnson's defiance of Congress' statutory efforts to limit his command of the army that provoked his impeachment, and near-conviction, in the aftermath of the Civil War. A similar act of defiance by Trump would no less represent a classic example of "high crimes and misdemeanors."

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Donald Trump Is Ignoring His Duty Under the War Powers Act to Consult Congress About North Korea

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During his address at the United Nations on Tuesday, President Donald Trump went further than he ever had before in threatening military action against North Korea. "If [the United States] is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea," Trump told the gathering at the U.N.'s annual General Assembly.

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Current event- Susan Rice (Obama's Former National Security Advisor) unmasked names of Trump's Campaign team in Trump Tower communication wiretappings. Congress is investigating whether or not she had the right to unmask certain names and violate their privacy rights. They are also investigating whether or not she properly handled the information which was gathered.

Definition- Created by Congressional Review Act (1996). It is a process whereby Congress can nullify agency regulations by joint resolution of legislative approval. It has been used rather infrequently.

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House intelligence committee sources say career officials at the National Security Council are slow-walking the delivery of subpoenaed records on former National Security Adviser Susan E. Rice's handling of classified information and the "unmasking" of Trump campaign workers - material from the Russian hacking probe that middle-level NSC managers claim was transferred to President Obama's library and could "remain closed to the public for five years."

One source, speaking only on the condition of anonymity, called the transfer curious and appeared to reflect an effort by former administration officials to obscure evidence on whether Ms. Rice and other top officials in the Obama White House illegally tried to identify which Trump campaign and transition aides had been caught up in the U.S. intelligence intercepts of Russian interference in the presidential race.

The two high-level intelligence committee sources told The Washington Times that they are confident the panel's investigators, despite the delays, will eventually get their hands on the records shipped to a heavily secure archive for Mr. Obama's yet-to-be-built presidential library.

A spokesman at the National Security Council would not directly address questions on the Rice case, saying only that the council 's staff is "still in the process of reviewing record requests" to ensure that any "executive privilege concerns" are taken into account.

The spokesman, Michael N. Anton, said the intelligence committee subpoenas were not submitted directly to the NSC, but to other agencies within the U.S. intelligence community. He did not respond to a request for specifics on which agencies.

The Barack Obama Presidential Library in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, declined to comment Thursday on the handling of Ms. Rice 's documents.

Rep. Devin Nunes, California Republican and chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has been an outspoken proponent of the panel's focus on the unmasking allegations. He also declined to comment.

Tom Fitton, president of the legal activist group Judicial Watch, said the sealing of unmasking records was an example of how U.S. intelligence agencies are stonewalling.

It was first revealed in a recent Freedom of Information Act exchange between Judicial Watch and the NCS that the records had been moved to the Obama library's secure archive.

"Having to subpoena this information indicates the insanity of the situation when the nation's top intelligence agencies are withholding information - basic information - that could bring to an end the controversy raging across this country," Mr. Fitton said in an interview Thursday.

He said he is considering other legal options to obtain the records.

"We are having to sue to get basic information," he said. "It is a shell game of documents being shifted over to the library. These documents are the smoking gun that investigators are looking for, and everyone knows it."

Mr. Fitton said President Trump "could get the [ Rice] records himself."

"They are restricted access," he said. "But there are ways that he could get them because they are executive branch records and he can get him."

In March, Ms. Rice admitted to requesting the unmasking of the names of some Americans redacted in raw intelligence reports on the U.S. surveillance intercepts, but argued that the requests were well within her job duties as national security adviser and were in no way driven by political motivations to know which figures from the Trump campaign were being discussed.

Mr. Trump on Twitter has repeatedly complained that the unmasking efforts and the Obama White House's handling of the Russian hacking probe have not received sufficient attention in the various investigations on Capitol Hill and by Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller.

On May 31, Republicans and Democrats on the House intelligence committee issued a series of subpoenas related to the Russia investigations. Three of the subpoenas - sent to intelligence community agencies - sought records relating to alleged unmasking requests made by senior Obama administration figures, including Ms. Rice, CIA Director John O. Brennan and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power.

Democrats want the probes to stay tightly focused on possible obstruction of justice by Mr. Trump and collusion between his associates and the Kremlin. The U.S. intelligence community has unanimously concluded that the Kremlin was behind an organized cyberattack campaign to interfere in the U.S. election and undermine the candidacy of Democrat Hillary Clinton last year.

But since the Russia probes launched earlier this year, Mr. Trump and his aides have argued that the real scandal lies elsewhere. They contend that senior Obama administration officials, including Ms. Rice, inappropriately unmasked and perhaps illegally leaked to the media the names of Trump campaign officials swept up in the hacking probe, and failed to take sufficient steps to stop the hacking once it was uncovered.

Judicial Watch sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the NSC in April seeking records concerning Ms. Rice 's communications on a range of subjects.

NSC Access Management Director John Powers responded on May 23 - roughly a week before the House intelligence committee began seeking the records.

"Documents from the Obama administration have been transferred to the Barack Obama Presidential Library," Mr. Powers wrote. "You may send your request to the Obama Library. However, you should be aware that under the Presidential Records Act, presidential records remain closed to the public for five years after an administration has left office."

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Susan Rice records that intelligence committee wants are locked in Obama archive

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House intelligence committee sources say career officials at the National Security Council are slow-walking the delivery of subpoenaed records on former National Security Adviser Susan E. Rice's handling of classified information and the "unmasking" of Trump campaign workers - material from the Russian hacking probe that middle-level NSC managers claim was transferred to President Obama's library and could "remain closed to the public for five years."

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Definition: The power delegated to the House of Representatives in the Constitution to charge the president, vice president, or other "civil officers", including federal judges, with "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." This is the first step in the constitutional process of removing government officials from office