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Politics

Senate joins Iraq showdown, short-term funding is one possibility

But Congress, expecting a veto of the funding bill, also begins working on alternatives.

By WES ALLISON
Published April 27, 2007

WASHINGTON - Capping weeks of angry rhetoric on Capitol Hill, the Senate put its stamp Thursday on the frustration many in Congress feel about the war in Iraq, approving a bill that calls for bringing American troops home by next spring.

President Bush pledged to veto it, and work already has begun on crafting another military funding bill that could retain some of the teeth in Thursday's version and still get past the White House.

But the Senate's 51-46 passage, following the narrow approval by the House a day before, expressed the growing dismay over the continuing violence in Iraq, four years after Bush declared "mission accomplished."

"You cannot conduct a war if you do not have the support of the American people, and the American people clearly want change," Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said during debate on the Senate floor Thursday. "And so it is time for us to start the process of the change."

The $124-billion bill includes about $95-billion for the Pentagon, including money for ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and billions for improving military medical care, better base housing and new equipment.

The rest would fund a variety of unrelated projects, including air and ship cargo screening, hurricane recovery on the Gulf Coast and drought relief for farmers. It also includes a $2.10-per-hour increase in the minimum wage.

But at the heart of the dispute between the White House and the bill's Democratic sponsors is the insistence that U.S. troops start leaving Iraq in July if the Iraqi government fails to make substantive progress on a variety of political and military goals.

Even if those benchmarks are being met, the bill sets a "goal" of having most U.S. troops out of Iraq by April 1, 2008. They could stay to hunt terrorists, train Iraqi troops and protect U.S. interests.

The White House says any timetable for redeploying the troops, even one as soft as this, is untenable. Bush has called for a clean bill, free of conditions and excess spending.

But the military still needs the money even if he vetoes it. Democratic leaders are considering how they could craft a new version that would be acceptable both to the president and to their own members - many of whom want the troops home now, and most of whom want the Iraqi government to face consequences if it can't quell its crippling sectarian infighting.

And because many liberal Democrats likely will vote against any bill that doesn't set a firm timetable for withdrawal, it would help if the leadership could craft a bill that would appeal to a couple of dozen Republicans.

Despite public disapproval with their position, congressional Republicans so far have remained remarkably unified against the bill, suffering just two defections in the House and two in the Senate.

But House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., acknowledged that unity might not last forever.

"We need to get some better results from Iraq, both politically, economically and militarily, and that needs to happen in the foreseeable future," Blunt said. "But not in the immediate future."

The task of producing a compromise will fall largely to Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., chairman of its defense subcommittee. Both are antiwar advocates.

Murtha said Thursday he has considered funding the military only for the next 60 days, not five months as the president has requested, to force Bush to return to Congress for a second helping in July.

That approach is popular with many Democrats, including many freshmen who ran on antiwar platforms. But with the monthlong August recess, Murtha said it could be tricky for Congress to pass a second supplemental funding bill.

"We'd have to figure out how much money to give them, for exactly the right amount of time, or we run out of money," he said.

Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., a senior member of Murtha's subcommittee, said leaders also are discussing ways to strip the spending bill of the timetable for withdrawal and include it in other measures, such as the main defense bill coming to the floor in early summer.

"You might have to split those up and put them somewhere else," he said. "That's an option."

But Murtha, Moran and others said they will insist on preserving several of the key provisions that the president opposes, including extra funding for veterans' health care; prohibitions on torture and permanent military bases in Iraq; and requirements that units meet the Pentagon's standards for rest and readiness before being deployed to Iraq, though Bush could waive that.

Democrats also will insist on including the benchmarks for the Iraqi government, including a plan for sharing the country's oil revenue among its people, improving Iraqi security forces, and national reconciliation.

Blunt said many Republicans would welcome that, too, unless Democrats try to tie them to U.S. military support.

Wes Allison can be reached at allison@sptimes.com or 202 463-0577.

Fast Facts:

How they voted

Yes: Bill Nelson, D-Fla.

No: Mel Martinez, R-Fla.

What they said

"We should uphold our end of the bargain and pass a bill that funds our troops and gives us a reasonable amount of time to judge this new strategy."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

"Our end of the bargain? We've done pretty well, I think - spending over half a trillion dollars in that faraway land of Iraq, having lost over 3,300 of our finest, 27,000 wounded. ... We've lived up to our end of the bargain."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

[Last modified April 26, 2007, 23:23:41]