posted on May 2, 2007 01:30:00 PM new
Then the demos go crawling to the White House to "work out" their differences.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Democratic-controlled House failed Wednesday to override President Bush's veto of an Iraqi war spending bill with timetables for troop withdrawals. Lawmakers went directly to the White House to talk about a new version.
"Yesterday was a day that highlighted differences," Bush said. "Today is the day where we can work together to find common ground."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sat on either side of the president. The Democratic leaders were stone- faced as Bush made his brief statement. The White House meeting started late, apparently delayed by the failed override attempt.
"I'm confident we can reach agreement," Bush said.
The 222-203 vote, far short of the two-thirds majority needed for a veto override, occurred just ahead of a White House meeting that Bush called to begin compromise talks with congressional leaders of both parties on new legislation to finance the war, now in its fifth year.
Voting to override Bush's veto were 220 Democrats and two Republicans. Voting to sustain the veto were 196 Republicans and seven Democrats.
"The president has turned a tin ear to the wishes of the American people," Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said during the hour-long debate before the vote. "The president wants a blank check. The Congress will not give it to him."
But Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., urged his colleagues to sustain the veto, saying politicians should not make military decisions.
"Now is not the time for the United States to back down in its war on terror," Lewis said.
Negotiations for a new spending bill could prove difficult. Both parties agree it should include benchmarks for progress in Iraq, but many Democrats insist they be tied to timelines for U.S. troop withdrawals if they are unmet. Bush and his congressional allies say such links are unacceptable.
Hours before the House vote sustained the veto, which Bush had issued Tuesday, the president showed little appetite for compromise.
"I am confident that with goodwill on both sides that we can move beyond political statements and agree on a bill that gives our troops the funds and flexibility to do the job that we asked them to do," he said in a speech in Washington before The Associated General Contractors of America.
Of the original bill pushed through Congress by Democrats, Bush said: "It didn't make any sense to impose the will of politicians over the recommendations of our military commanders in the field."
Pelosi had told reporters Wednesday: "Benchmarks are important, but they have to have teeth in order to be effective."
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said before the vote that he hopes to have a new bill passed in the House in two weeks, with a final measure sent to the president before Memorial Day. "We're not going to leave our troops in harms way . . . without the resources they need," said Hoyer, D-Md.
Hoyer would not speculate on exactly what the bill might look like, but said he anticipates a minimum-wage increase will be part of it. He said the bill should fund combat through Sept. 30 as Bush has requested, casting doubt that Democratic leaders will adopt a proposal by Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., to fund the war two or three months at a time.
As for bipartisan cooperation in Congress, neither side seemed in much of a hurry Wednesday. "There have been discussions about talking," Hoyer said.
Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said Republicans weren't taking any options off the table. But "what I want is a clean bill" without a timetable on the war, he said
The situation has Democratic lawmakers in a difficult position. Because they control the House and Senate, the pressure is mainly on them to craft a bill that Bush will sign, and thus avoid accusations that they failed to finance troops in a time of war.
The party's most liberal members, especially in the House, say they will vote against money for continuing the war if there's no binding language on troop drawdowns. The bill Bush rejected would require the first U.S. combat troops to be withdrawn by Oct. 1 with a goal of a complete pullout six months later.
"I think the Democrats are in a box," Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., said in an interview. "We're pretty resolute on our side. We are not going to tie this funding to any type of withdrawal deadline or any type of redeployment deadline."
Some Democrats believe the GOP solidarity will crack over time, noting that polls show heavy public support for a withdrawal plan.
Numerous possible compromises are being floated on Capitol Hill, all involving some combination of benchmarks. Some would require Bush to certify monthly that the Iraqi government is fully cooperating with U.S. efforts in several areas, such as giving troops the authority to pursue extremists.
The key impasse in Congress is whether to require redeployments of U.S. troops if the benchmarks are not met.
Under one proposal being floated, unmet benchmarks would cause some U.S. troops to be removed from especially violent regions such as Baghdad. They would redeploy to places in Iraq where they presumably could fight terrorists but avoid the worst centers of Sunni-Shia conflict.
A new spending bill "has got to be tied to redeployment," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., the House's fourth-ranking Democratic leader. He conceded, however, that Democrats have yet to figure out where they will find the votes.
"Our members will not accept restraints on the military," House Minority Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri said. He suggested tying benchmarks to continued U.S. nonmilitary aid to Iraq, an idea that many Democrats consider too weak.
Democrats won control of the House and Senate in elections that largely focused on Iraq. They showed impressive solidarity in passing the bill that Bush vetoed Tuesday, losing only 14 House Democrats while holding 216.
But top Democrats say they have no hope of replicating that showing once they begin making even modest concessions to Bush. That makes them dependent on Republican help.
It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.George S. Patton
posted on May 7, 2007 12:42:50 PM newAnd there were those TWO.....get that LOGANSDAD....TWO republicans that voted with the libs/dems.
At least you are finally coming to your senses and realizing that it is not just Democrats that are voting that way. It is a step in the right diretcion Linda. There may be hope for you yet, but I doubt it.
WASHINGTON - Republicans in Congress are increasingly worried that their stalwart support of President Bush's Iraq war policy may cost them dearly in next year's elections. Should their solidarity crack, it could boost Democrats' efforts to start troop withdrawals.
GOP lawmakers have marched in virtual lockstep with Bush so far, supporting his troop increase, an open-ended war commitment and other policies that have grown increasingly unpopular. Privately, some express fears that their loyalty might lead them over a political cliff in 2008, when they hope to reclaim the House and Senate majorities they lost last year.
For now, there's little overt evidence of such wavering, and many Republicans say it's too late to uncouple their party's near-term fate from the war's outcome. When the House voted May 2 to sustain Bush's veto of a bill that would have imposed redeployment deadlines, only two of the chamber's 201 Republicans abandoned the president.
Still, Rep. Jack Kingston, a reliable Bush supporter from Georgia, said that vote "could have been the peak, possibly the last statement of House public solidarity with the White House. As the war develops in the next two crucial months, the political solidarity may change."
The party of the war
A question increasingly asked in the Capitol is: how big a price might the party pay if the war continues to claim U.S. casualties without quelling the anti-American insurgency?
"We have been very supportive" of the administration's Iraq policy, Kingston said in an interview with The Associated Press. But among GOP House members, he said, "there are discussions on the floor: 'Hey, 30 members lost their seats last year, and a lot of them lost because of the war.'"
It might not matter, said Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio. "As a party, we are locked into being the party of the war in Iraq - right, wrong or indifferent," he said. "The only salvation for us is that it works."
Fall deadline
Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon, one of two Senate Republicans to oppose the latest spending bill for the conflict, said the war "is a problem because it's defining our party to the American people, and the American people have lost faith in this cause."
"Many Republican colleagues are simply waiting until September," he said, citing the deadline Bush gave to Army Gen. David Petraeus for a progress report on the war. Unless there is a dramatic turnabout by then, Smith said, the party's near-unanimity is almost certain to fracture.
Some Republican lawmakers report considerable support in their states or districts for Bush's campaign against terrorism, despite widespread frustration over the war's longevity and casualty rates. But a number of conservative commentators recently have said elected Republicans are becoming dangerously out of step with mainstream public opinion, and at least one GOP Senate aide has distributed copies of the articles as a warning to colleagues.
"There's a lot of nervousness," said Rep. Ray H. LaHood, R-Ill., who has backed Bush's war policies. He said a fellow House member recently recounted visiting a coffee shop full of Republicans in his home district and finding "none of them supports what we're doing over there."
Some Republican leaders say their stand on Iraq is a matter of principle, not politics, and they suggest they will accept electoral setbacks if that is the cost.
"When you think about what Iraq means to our nation, and what failure in Iraq will mean to our nation, it's really far more important than any election," House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio told reporters Thursday. He later added that he expects to lose no GOP seats over the issue in 2008, because "I'm planning on victory in Iraq."
Public opinion
For many months, polls have found overwhelming opposition to the president's war policies among Democratic voters. But in a worrisome sign for Republicans, a large proportion of self-identified independents now share that view.
In an April poll by AP-Ipsos, 61 percent of independents said going to war in Iraq was a mistake, and 56 percent felt it was a hopeless cause. By contrast, three-quarters of Republicans called the war a worthy cause.
Because many GOP-held House districts are overwhelmingly conservative - just as many Democratic-held districts are heavily liberal - there is less concern about Iraq's political ramifications among Republican House members than senators, who represent entire states.
But among those watching the situation most anxiously are GOP senators facing re-election next year in competitive states, such as Smith of Oregon, John Warner of Virginia, Susan Collins of Maine, John Sununu of New Hampshire and Norm Coleman of Minnesota.
Some Republicans, especially those from strongly conservative House districts, say pollsters and commentators are overstating the party's political peril.
"We're not in despair. We're not in isolation," said Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas.
While many Americans clearly want to withdraw from Iraq promptly, "the far vaster group of people think Congress had better not stand up our guys" in uniform, Sessions said.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
