The Senate Democrats are announcing their willingness to drop an end date for withdrawal in exchange for passing a beginning date. The House Dems have followed suit. The response from the left has been muted but unimpressed.
Jill:
You want to know why Democrats are perceived as wimps? It has nothing to do with national security or war. It’s the party’s unwillingness to go to the mat for what’s right — and its willingness to sacrifice hundreds more American kids if it means David Broder won’t call them “partisan.” (Except he will anyway.)
If pathetic, beleagured Larry Craig can hold the Senate Republicans hostage over his indiscretion in a public restroom, you’d think the Dems could exact just a little bit of leverage on the Iraq debacle.
Assholes.
The problem is that the Dems face the same difficulty they faced in the spring. They kind of have to pass the the fiscal 2008 Defense appropriations bill (HR 3222) and some sort of war supplemental spending measure. The House has already passed the appropriations bill, so they will fight it out on just the supplemental.
Also Wednesday, House Defense Appropriations Chairman John Murtha (D-Pa.) said he won’t begin work on the Iraq supplemental spending bill until October or November, and he will not roll it into the regular defense spending bill. He is to include withdrawal language, but said he is also waiting to hear from Petraeus before deciding what that will be.
If the Senate is going to attach withdrawal language to the Defense Appropriations bill, they are going to have to get 60 votes. Failing that, they can attach language to the supplemental bill, but they’ll still need 60 votes. Some people advocate that they simply refuse to pass these bills and that they hold up the Senate for any other business until the Republicans cave. That is theoretically possible to do, but we have to consider the congressional calendar.
A host of funding and reauthorization measures must be passed before they expire by September’s end, a challenge in a month with limited legislative days that will be dominated by debate over the Iraq war.
Democrats are plotting their fall strategy for deciding when it makes sense politically to pick fights with the White House — or instead compromise to ensure speedy passage of legislation…
…The Senate this week will take up a military construction and veterans affairs spending bill, one of up to four appropriations bills Reid wants to take up in September. The other three are funding for the Defense Department, transportation programs and foreign operations.
None of the 12 annual spending bills has become law, even though the 2007 fiscal year ends Sept. 30. Democratic leaders have not signaled whether the chamber still plans to clear each one individually or cobble all 12 spending bills into one massive omnibus appropriations bill…
…In addition to the dozen appropriations bills, several major authorization bills must be completed before programs expire at month’s end. This includes a reauthorization of Food and Drug Administration programs to approve drugs and medical devices, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program that covers about 7 million low-income children, a Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill and a national overhaul of farm policies. Democrats also want to clear the primary law governing colleges and financial aid, which expires at the end of October, and another measure that would overhaul student loans.
Republican opponents of the Democratic measures see the limited time as advantageous, and plan attacks against both the underlying bills and possibly their short-term extensions.
Brian Kennedy, a spokesman for House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio, said Democrats have put themselves in a bind by using precious floor time this year in pushing through appropriations bills to force a withdrawal from Iraq when they knew Bush wouldn’t agree.
“Had we not spent months arguing about a surrender date, Congress might be in better shape with the end of the year approaching,” Kennedy said.
That’s the backdrop to the debate over Iraq. If the Dems can’t get an end date for withdrawal through the Senate, they cannot just drop everything else and tie up the Congress. There is too much to do and too few legislative days to get it all done. The Dems are already well behind schedule due to their spring strategy.
In these circumstances, I understand that they’ll settle for an agreement over a start-date for withdrawal. However, Steny Hoyer’s plan is a non-starter.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) came out on Wednesday in favor of holding a vote on a bipartisan Iraqi withdrawal bill. Meanwhile, the party’s left wing renewed calls for a pullout and announced a new campaign to block funds for arming and training the Iraq Security Forces.
The bipartisan legislation, authored by Reps. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) and John Tanner (D-Tenn.), would order Bush to draft plans to withdraw from Iraq but not require them to be implemented. Rep. Phil English (R-Pa.) and two other Republicans have signed on as cosponsors.
That is not good enough. We have to do better than that. It looks like the Dems are relying too much on Sen. John Warner.
Democratic officials say Mr. Warner’s approach could provide their best opening, allowing Congress to approve a start date for withdrawal without setting a deadline for completing the job. Most Republicans and several Democrats have said they are uncomfortable with such a deadline.
“Warner is where the play is,” said one Democratic official familiar with the party’s thinking who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to discuss internal deliberations publicly.
Warner is influential and a potential ally. Certainly we need him and his leadership to get to 60 votes. What we cannot settle for, however, is a policy that the President is legally permitted to ignore. If we are going to trade away hard end dates then we need to insist on hard start dates.