Democrats insisted earnestly that they could afford to play political games with the Iraq War funding this week. They didn’t need to pass a viable bill that would allott more money to Iraq and Afghanistan before leaving for the holiday. They could afford to pass another veto-bait withdrawal bill, they argued, because Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is already allowed to move funds from the regular Department of Defense spending bill over to the war effort if he sees fit.

Gates sees matters very differently. He says that he can shift no more than $4 billion from the Pentagon’s normal operations to the war, and so he plans drastic action unless Congress passes a war supplemental spending bill:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that unless Congress passes funding for the Iraq war within days, he will direct the Army and Marine Corps to begin developing plans to lay off employees and terminate contracts early next year.
Gates, who met with members of Congress on Wednesday, said that he does not have the money or the flexibility to move funding around to adequately cover the costs of the continuing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“There is a misperception that this department can continue funding our troops in the field for an indefinite period of time through accounting maneuvers, that we can shuffle money around the department. This is a serious misconception,” Gates told reporters at the Pentagon.

Who knows, maybe Gates can at least get some revenge by de-funding some of Jack Murtha’s (D-Pa.) earmarks and using the money to pay for the war?