Congress heads to the big money vote on Iraq

Growing impatience
Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., said in his northern California district there’s impatience with the war and an expectation that the new Democratic Congress would end it. “People are saying that right now, not just in my district, but across the country,” Thompson said Tuesday. “It’s hard to understand why — if we just had an election — why can’t this change? I’m one who believes it needs to change faster than it’s changing.”

Thompson has voted against four of the five past Iraq supplemental spending bills and said he might vote against the current one as well, he said Tuesday.

Thompson represents a safe Democratic district (he won re-election last November with 66 percent of the vote); but many Democrats hold marginal seats that could be in jeopardy if they vote to cut off funding.

Thompson is also co-sponsoring with Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. a bill to impose a limit on the number of U.S. troops deployed in Iran and to require withdrawal of most troops by March 31, 2008.

Obama said Tuesday he might seek to attach the measure to the Iraq supplemental spending bill.

A mixed message?
“I don’t think it sends a mixed message” if it is attached to the spending bill, Obama said Tuesday. “What we’re saying here is that, to the troops on the ground, we have an ironclad commitment. We want to make absolutely sure they’ve got the armor and they’ve got the equipment that allows them to succeed.”

But he said U.S. troops “also have to have to a strategy that has the potential of working.”

“We are not going to allow the situation in Iraq to continue,” Reid vowed Monday night on the Senate floor.

But at the same time Democratic leaders have made it clear they will not try to cut off funding for the troops already deployed in Iraq.

Levin reinforced that point Monday night: “We do not want to withhold funds from the troops in the field,” he told the Senate.

What most Senate Democrats wanted this week, but lacked the votes to get, was a vote — separate from the funding request — on the non-binding Warner-Levin resolution.

What Senate Republicans wanted is a vote — with a 60-vote requirement — on a measure offered by Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., that would declare that Congress won’t take any action to endanger U.S. forces in Iraq, including ending or reducing funds for troops in the field.

Problem with Gregg amendment
In Durbin’s view, the Gregg amendment “says we won’t do anything to deny the troops resources and materials. Well, of course we won’t, but if we decide to cap the number of troops that are going in there, does that violate the Gregg amendment?”

“They’re in a box; they’re in a big box, because of Iraq; they can’t both please the president and (do) what their constituents asked them to do.” That was the assessment of Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. of where most Republicans now find themselves politically.

The vote on the $100 billion in new Iraq spending will also put many members of Congress in both parties in “a big box” of deciding whether to vote to keep paying for an Iraq strategy they’ve repeatedly said they oppose.

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