House GOP To Finally Play Hardball On Benghazi Emails?

by JASmius



The power of the purse.....sort of:

If Republicans have their way, a portion of funding for the State Department could be withheld until officials cooperate with an investigation into the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

According to the Hill, the House Appropriations Committee's State and Foreign Operations bill for the 2016 fiscal year "withholds 15% of State Department's operational funds until requirements related to proper management of Freedom of Information Act and electronic communications are met," Republicans said in a statement.

The measure delivers on a threat by the House GOP earlier this month that they would withhold funding until they obtained documents related to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's tenure, the Hill reported.

"The Hillary emails would be wholly contained within the net that they are casting," an Appropriations Committee source told the Hill.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy warned last month that "there is a chance" that some of the funding for the department could be withheld as leverage to assist the House Select Committee on Benghazi.

"There's a discussion. We haven't come to a conclusion yet," Texas-12 GOP Representative Kay Granger, chairwoman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that handles funding for the State Department and foreign aid, told the Hill at the time.

Is a little under a sixth of Foggy Bottom's "operational funds" enough to get their attention?  Probably not, since they know and House Republicans know that the latter will never make good on even so meager and timid a threat.  It really makes one wonder why they bother making such threats, drawing such "lines in the sand" when they always cave, always fold, and always surrender on them, as well as if there's any Regime provocation that actually would motivate them to follow through, and what on Earth that would be.

If House Republicans are going to make empty threats anyway, why not threaten to zero out the entire State Commissariat budget?  Forget emails, that would have the virtue of feigning the enormous enhancement of U.S. national security in one fell, faux parsimonious swoop.