WH, Democrats Prep for War Funding Debate

By Mark Impomeni
Apr 24th 2008 8:00AM

Filed Under:eBush Administration, House, Democrats, Featured Stories, Iraq

Nancy PelosiThe Bush Administration has requested $108 billion in supplemental funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the remainder of this fiscal year. Democratic leaders in Congress are trying to decide how to proceed on the measure. President Bush has threatened to veto any war spending measure that exceeds his funding request or that contains added provisions. Democrats are considering both strategies to make the funding request more palatable to some in their caucus. It's a reprise of a battle fought between the Administration and Congress last year, one the Democrats eventually lost, and the experience has made them just a little more wary of this year's exercise.

Earlier this week, reports indicated that House Democrats were considering adding withdrawal language to the supplemental. That's a tactic that failed them last year, as a series of vetoes and failed override attempts led to Democrats caving in to the Administration and passing a bill containing no restrictions on troops and every dollar requested by the White House. Their strategy this year strategy may be to try and add favorite Democratic economic measures to the bill like food stamp assistance and extended unemployment benefits. Democrats may still try to make a stand on withdrawal language as well. But the fact that the leadership in Congress is already considering inducements to get its more stridently ant-war members to vote for the bill shows that Democrats realize the politics of using the supplemental request to make a point of their opposition to the war are not on their side.

The Democrats' uneasiness about the upcoming debate is driven not only by their recent bad experience; there are political considerations as well. Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), the man charged with making the Democrats' campaign message match Congressional actions, admitted on Monday that the upcoming debate was at least partly about positioning Democrats for the November elections.
There are some people who would say, 'OK, why are you going through this exercise again, if the president is going to veto this?' We have a responsibility to do everything we can to follow through on the changes we say we want made. I think it is a question of demonstrating where you stand, and what you will do, and continue to push to do, if you are elected in November."
One way that Democrats are considering insulating themselves and the war funding debate from the election season is adding an additional $70 billion to the Administration' request for the next fiscal year. This would prevent Congress from having to vote on another supplemental request after the fiscal year ends on September 30th, right in the middle of the fall campaign. Republicans in Congress and the Administration will oppose such an effort in their own exercise of political strategizing with the war funding measure.

Last year, before the troop surge took full effect, Democrats could argue that the war in Iraq was going badly and that the Iraqi government was hopelessly deadlocked over sectarian issues. But with the dramatic success of the surge, and with growing indications that the Baghdad government is resolving its sectarian differences, those arguments have been largely neutralized. Since Democrats opposed the surge strategy so vigorously when it was proposed and throughout the year, there is no way they can try now with any legitimacy to get on the bandwagon. Democrats are left with a choice of trying to appease their anti-war base with an empty effort to make a political point, which they know will fail; or pushing the supplemental off the calendar as quickly as possible by passing it unchanged. Either option could have consequences for them in the general election. Republicans will make every effort to insure that whatever option the Democrat's choose, they pay a political price for it.

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