Even if the democratic majority in Congress and some republicans try to block President Bush’s money to support his plans, the only thing Congress can do is to deny him money from the budget, from items already scheduled and whatever might be left in discretionary spending. They cannot stop him from borrowing more money and running up the national debt even further.

That’s the way the separation of powers works in our government. The President and his Cabinet can do almost anything they want when it comes to raising money including raising taxes which they are too chicken to do. And, in a way, it’s even a bit unusual that Bush would ask Congress for more “emergency” cash to carry out his military “surge” in Iraq.

Henry Paulson is the third Secretary of the Treasury to serve under Bush. Paul O’Neill and John Snow resigned for the usual reasons, the true nature of which we will never know.

George W. Bush seems to have a Machiavellian penchant for getting rid of anyone who doesn’t agree with and support his madness. Witness the number of Generals he’s recently dismissed and replaced because their advice was counter to his crusade. And this is the man who has repeatedly said he “will listen to his men on the ground” and “everything should be on the table.” Chalk up another series of lies.

But Henry Paulson seems to be loyal through and through. The deceptive tricks he’s played by putting off billions in debt until one working day after the close of fiscal 2006 and doing much the same thing in December to minimize the impact of “interest” dumped in entitlement accounts proves this.

Yet, Mr. Paulson is faced with several looming factors that have not plagued other Secretaries of the Treasury or at least not to this extent. These can be briefly summed up as follows:

• Our largest creditors, China and Japan, have recently announced their intentions to “come off” the dollar and invest elsewhere. With a dollar falling in value, can you blame them? This is like the bank telling a developer they are no longer going to support his plans and may even call-in his balloons. It prompted the December trip to the Orient by Paulson and Bernard Bernanke, Chairman of the independent Federal Reserve. A trip where we are still waiting for their report. (See: No News – Not Good)

• We are rapidly approaching the debt ceiling of $8.965 trillion imposed by Congress last year. By the end of March, Paulson will be asking Congress to increase the debt limit another trillion or so and the democrats will have the option of doing what the republicans did after receiving their voter “mandate” in 1994. Refusing to raise the debt limit and causing shutdowns as Newt Gingrich did when he had a “contract with America” in his pocket. Newt only wanted the democrats to agree to a balanced budget, a law that finally was enacted in November of 1997 (and has since been ignored), but he was willing to bankrupt the country to get that commitment. Will the democrats have the nerve to refuse to sponsor the President’s way of raising cash for war, especially when the other half of the annual interest is due entitlements on the last day of June? We’ll see.

• Those of you who follow the U.S. Treasury’s announcements and results of “auctions” to sell securities know that the securities “accepted” have been less than fifty percent of those “tendered” for the past year or so, and that recently this percentage has dropped considerably. Those of you who do not subscribe to these announcements can do so by going to Mr. Van Zeck’s “something for everyone” web page and subscribing to the Treasury’s Bureau of Public Debt email announcements. Notice that it’s not called the Bureau of Public and Government Debt.

I hesitate to mention this for fear it will become a reality, but one of the ways Bush can always raise even more cash is by doing the same thing that the government, including Congress, does with other scams – simply name an Emergency War Money trust fund, dump a trillion in nonmarketable bonds in it, and withdraw cash from the General Fund of taxpayer dollars any time it’s deemed desirable. It works for 141 (at last count) other bogus trusts, many being drawn down every month, and it bypasses Congress.

Are you wondering why the democrats have been pressuring Bush to include the cost of the invasion and occupation of Iraq in the annual budget? This is wishful thinking that Bush would be even dippier than he is already if he were to go along with it.