Obama Wants a $5 Billion Slush Fund to Fight ISIS

The Hill reports that President Obama wants Congress to give him a $5 billion fund, but does not want to go to Congress to get explicit authorization to fight the Islamic State.

President Obama is pushing congressional leaders to authorize a $5 billion counterterrorism fund that could be used to support operations against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

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The president first suggested the fund during a foreign policy address earlier this year at the West Point military academy, but it went nowhere in Congress.

The idea was revisited on Monday by White House press secretary Josh Earnest, who floated it as something that “would strengthen the hand of this president and future presidents for dealing with urgent situations like this.”

“This is a core component of the president’s strategy for dealing with this and other issues like it around the globe — that is, additional resources that can be used by the United States to build up effective partners so that when the United States has to confront threats like this, that we have well-trained, well-equipped, effective partners that we can work with to confront these problems,” Earnest said Monday.

Did you see the part that I put in bold letters there?

That’s some tricksy maneuvering by the White House. The imminent threat, the one that the president is resisting going to Congress over, is IS. But Earnest made sure to include “and other issues like it around the globe.”

Now, what might those be? What else might constitute a looming “threat,” in the eyes of this administration?

If you ask Secretary of State John Kerry, it’s “climate change.”

Former Secretary of State and presumed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton says climate change is “the most consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of challenges we face as a nation and a world.”

Not IS or similar Islamic terrorism. Not Putin, with his designs on rebuilding the Soviet empire.

President Barack Obama: climate change is a “direct threat” to the United States.

Now the president resists consulting Congress on IS, but wants Congress to hand him a check for $5 billion to deal with IS “and other threats like it around the globe.” He wants the money, but no oversight on how it gets spent.

Congress should not write the president a blank check.