Don't fund the troops - easier said than done?

Much of the talk on the left right now is that the Dems in Congress should step up and cut off funding for the troops, or at the very least to the new troops sent as part of the surge. Just about everything I've read posits that the Dems could in fact shut down funding and that the only reason they likely won't do so is because they're scared of being labeled "against the troops."

I don't get that line of argument. First, I'm sure there is indeed some political fear about being labeled against the troops, I buy that part. But the other aspect of it would seem to be that the Dems couldn't make that happen if they wanted to. One possible way would be to pass a funding bill that cut funding dramatically or didn't include funding for new troops. But they don't have the supermajority needed to break up a filibuster. And they don't have the supermajority needed to overturn a veto (although using the veto in this case would be tricky and may not apply). And they probably don't even have the votes in the Senate to do that, given the non-voting status of one Senator currently and the fact that at least one Dem would not agree with that strategy (as is their right as a duly elected official, whether we agree or not).

So their other option would be to passively cut off funding, simply don't pass any more extensions of funding to the troops in Iraq. I think that approach lacks support not just for the "political fear" reasoning, but also because to bluntly cut off funding for troops already in the field is a wildly over-reaching mechanism, one that seems unwise and which seems to me to fly in the face of Constitutional division of powers (yes, Bush has violated these divisions repeatedly, but two wrongs...). I would not support my representatives if they went in that direction.

Better oversight, especially of prisoner abuse, sure. Resolutions and public pressure to begin re-deployment, absolutely. Resistance to approving any action against other countries, barring new attacks and/or circumstances, agreed. But to sit back and literally not pass any further funding for troops in the field, which seems to be the only viable way for the Dems to actually use funding to oppose the war, simply doesn't seem appropriate to me.

We can disagree on approaches to the war all day, but my main point is that railing about the Dems cutting off funding probably isn't terribly valid, when one thinks about it.