Progressives Block Pelosi's Blank Check for Iraq

House Democratic leaders are putting together the largest Iraq war spending bill yet, a measure that is expected to fund the war through the end of the Bush presidency and for nearly six months into the next president's term.

The bill, which could be unveiled as early as this week, signals that Democrats are resigned to the fact they can't change course in Iraq in the final months of President Bush's term. Instead, the party is pinning its hopes of ending the war on winning the White House in November.
Bay Area lawmakers, who represent perhaps the most anti-war part of the country, acknowledge the bill will anger many voters back home.
"It's going to be a tough sell to convince people in my district that funding the war for six months into the new president's term is the way to end the war," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma, a leader of the Out of Iraq Caucus who plans to oppose the funding. "It sounds like we are paying for something we don't want."
The bill is expected to provide $108 billion that the White House has requested for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Lawmakers who are drafting it say it also will include a so-called bridge fund of $70 billion to give the new president several months of breathing room before having to ask Congress for more money.

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Dems don't want to be facing, well, you, just as they're voting on another $70 billion (on top of the $108 Bush is going to force out of them) for the war they're campaigning on ending. And they don't want the next president, assuming it's a Democrat, to have to do the same in his or her first months in office.

And so George W. Bush will put on his oversized foam rubber "fiscal conservative" cowboy hat for a while, and pretend it makes sense to draw the line on the supplemental at $108 billion and not a penny more (or he'll veto it, he says), even though he's about to ask for another $70 billion a few weeks later.

Take a good look at that situation, though.

What's more absurd, Democrats who want to end the war voting to front him (and the next president) an extra $70 billion more than he wants? Or Bush's ridiculous notion that it's somehow fiscally conservative to "budget" $70 billion for the war in FY09, when he's right now demanding nearly 55% more than that in supplemental FY08 spending.

What a friggin' crock.

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) prepared to snub Capitol Hill’s most powerful money men, suggesting Thursday that they could hold votes on a massive wartime spending bill without letting appropriators touch the legislation first.

Such a move risks creating a big battle over Iraq in an election year. The final decision has not been made, but lawmakers and aides familiar with discussions say there’s a strong chance the shortcut plan will go ahead.

Appropriations panels would slow the bills down and probably mean the measure would be loaded with extraneous provisions. This, in turn, could lead to a veto fight with the White House over one of the few must-pass bills left before November’s elections.
Leaders appear to favor moving the bill directly to the chamber floors, limiting the number of amendments that could be offered.

This has infuriated Republicans and Democratic appropriators, who would be shut out of the process.

Plans to short-circuit the process come after the Senate’s 90-year-old Appropriations chairman, Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), whose recent frailty has raised questions about his capacity to run the panel, ignored leadership negotiations and scheduled a committee markup next week.

Democratic leaders reacted coolly to Byrd’s move. “It’s easy to cancel a markup,” Reid said Thursday, and suggested that Byrd was motivated by a desire to “protect” the appropriators’ turf.

Reid was studiedly dismissive of the panel, saying, “I don’t know whether there is a need to have a markup over here with the Appropriations Committee.”

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http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/reid-pelosi-ready-snub-on-iraq-bill-2008-05-01.html

Democrats running Congress struggled Thursday to write an Iraq war funding bill that can both pass through their fractious ranks and also be signed by President Bush.
Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., acknowledged the House is unlikely to vote on the measure next week as he had originally hoped.
House and Senate Democrats disagree over how much to add to Bush's $108 billion war request in the face of a White House veto threat.
House Democrats, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey of Wisconsin are pushing to avoid a veto, while Senate Democrats continue to press add-ons.
"We would rather just save time and get it over with right from the start," Pelosi told reporters Thursday.
Pelosi said, however, that she is "pushing very strongly" to add a new college benefits package to the measure for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Democrats are also eyeing another $12.7 billion plan to give 13 more weeks of unemployment checks to people whose benefits have run out and 13 weeks beyond that in states with especially high unemployment rates.

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