The Reid-Feingold bill that would have cut off troop funding for Iraq after March 31, 2008, failed by a vote of 29-67.
Sherrod Brown (for some reason) and Tim Johnson didn’t vote. Here are the Democrats that voted against Reid-Feingold:
Baucus (D-MT), Bayh (D-IN), Bingaman (D-NM), Carper (D-DE), Casey (D-PA), Conrad (D-ND), Dorgan (D-ND), Landrieu (D-LA)
Levin (D-MI), Lincoln (D-AR), McCaskill (D-MO), Nelson (D-FL), Nelson (D-NE), Pryor (D-AR), Reed (D-RI), Rockefeller (D-WV), Salazar (D-CO), Tester (D-MT), Webb (D-VA)
No Republicans voted for it. Liddy Dole and John McCain didn’t vote. It’s not too hard to figure out the voting here. Sen. Carl Levin (DEM-MI),
Sen. Jack Reed (DEM-RI), Sen. Bill Nelson (DEM-FL), Sen. Ben Nelson (DEM-NE), Sen. Evan Bayh (DEM-IN), Sen. Mark Pryor (DEM-AR), Sen. James Webb (DEM-VA) and Sen. Claire McCaskill (DEM-MO) all serve on the Senate Armed Services Committee. So does Joe Lieberman. Rockefeller is the chair of the Intelligence Committee. The rest (with the exception of Casey and Carper) are from Red States. And Casey and Carper are the two Democratic senators most out of touch with their home constituencies.
It’s hard to say how much influence the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, had on the vote, but I suspect it was considerable. And Levin voted against going to war in the first place.
Via email, Feingold seems satisfied:
“Today the Senate took another step toward acknowledging the will of the American people, who want to end this misguided mission in Iraq. A majority of Senate Democrats are on the record clearly stating that the President’s Iraq policy is a failure and that we need to take real action to change course. Keeping 150,000 American troops in the middle of an Iraqi civil war both hurts our national security and impedes the ability to reach a political solution in Iraq. We must continue to ratchet up the pressure on the President and supporters of this irresponsible war to safely redeploy our troops from Iraq so we can refocus on those who attacked us on 9/11.”
I’m not satisfied. This is taking too damn long.
