Yesterday, I highlighted the McGovern-Hatfield Amendment of 1970, which sought to defund the Vietnam War after a specified date (to allow withdrawal of US forces).
That amendment failed.
In that piece, I linked a 1972 CRS report providing the text of amendments in the 92nd Congress designed to limit US operations in Indochina.
In an earlier piece, I linked several more recent CRS reports, including Congressional Use of Funding Cutoffs Since 1970 Involving U.S. Military Forces and Overseas Deployments.
The 1972 report covers dozens of amendments offered in the 92nd.
But, amongst all of them, no amendment actually cutting off funds from the war passed the Congress.
Congressional Use (p2) lists the four Indochina defunding provisions that were enacted: only one was passed (in December 1970) while significant numbers of US forces were in Indochina, and that applied solely to combat troops and military advisers in Cambodia. The others were passed in and after June 1973.
Now, the Dem majorities in the 92nd were nominally substantial: in the Senate 54-44-2, in the House, 255-180. But there were still a large clan (so to speak!) of Boll Weevils (even guys like Stennis and Eastland were there) to make a solid hawk block even that late into the war.
One piece of new information: there is, it seems, a tertium quid between a mere sense of Congress res and a defunding provision: the form used to introduce such an amendment was
It is hereby declared to be the policy of the United States...
One example (on p14 of the PDF): Leader Mansfield introduced a policy of the United States amendment on June 22 1971 to the Military Selective Service Act (HR 6531), where the policy was stated to be
to terminate at the earliest practicable date all military operations of the United States in Indochina and to provide for the prompt and orderly withdrawal of all United States military personnel not later than nine months after the date of the enactment...
The Senate adopted the amendment 57-42, but the House voted 219-176 to table a motion to instruct conferees to accept the Mansfield amendment.
In conference, the amendment was changed to replace the policy of the United States wording with sense of Congress wording, and the conference report passed both houses.
Further research needed to see whether a policy of the United States amendment actually passed!
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