Kennedy plan would block funds for new troops

Divisions among Democrats
Kennedy said he expected a vote on the measure, which would take the form of an amendment to an appropriations bill, within three weeks.

By lending his name to the measure, Kennedy will force congressional Democrats to confront their own divisions. While they are eager to take on the president in light of public opinion polls showing that more than 60 percent of Americans oppose increasing troop levels, they are at odds over how to do it.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., have endorsed freezing funding for new troops, but other key Democrats are skeptical that they have the power to do so.

Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat in the House, told NBC News on Wednesday that “as a matter of constitutionality” he did not believe Bush was under any obligation to seek new authorization from Congress. Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, made the same point Sunday in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Republican supporters of the administration's policy were quick to seize on the Democratic disagreements.

‘Going to have to make a choice’
“Democrats are going to have to make a choice here, and they’re going to have to decide where they stand in terms of two issues: Number one, do you want Iraq to succeed, and, if so, what does that mean?” White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters Wednesday. “And, number two, do you believe in supporting the troops as you say, and how do you express that support?”

Presidential candidate Duncan Hunter of California, the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said in an interview on “Hardball”: “The president is the commander-in-chief. I think that our policy should go from our shores with one voice, and the fact that Democrats are going all over the place ... I think that’s a bad thing for this country.”

But Kennedy said voters in the fall election were “very loud and very clear: They do not want additional American troops put into harm’s way; they do not want American troops involved in a civil war.” 

Even if his proposal is jettisoned for different approach, Kennedy said, Democrats have to come up with a strategy and do something soon.

“If we don’t take action in the short term,” he told “Hardball” host Chris Matthews, “this president will go ahead and order these troops over to Iraq, and then it will be too late.”

NBC’s Mike Viqueira and Les Kretman and MSNBC’s Chris Matthews contributed to this report.

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