Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday that Democrats won’t approve more money for the Iraq war this year unless President Bush agrees to begin bringing troops home. By the end of the week, the House and Senate planned to vote on a $50 billion measure for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill would require Bush to initiate troop withdrawals immediately with the goal of ending combat by December 2008. If Bush vetoes the bill, “then the president won’t get his $50 billion,” Reid, D-Nev., told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference.
As Brian noted here earlier today, now that the Pentagon has received it’s annual budget of $460 billion, and the president has been given authority “to divert funding from regular Pentagon accounts to fund the war,” it seems like this is mostly posturing. The president will veto the bill and it will be months before the Pentagon has to come begging for more. So it’s a gamble–if things fall apart in Iraq, the Dems may be able to force a date for withdrawal down the president’s throat. But if not, they’ll ending up passing another “clean” supplemental, and caving in front of their antiwar base just around the time that they party is settling on its nominee. Lieberman just sent out a statement criticizing Reid:
…”Unfortunately, congressional opponents of the war have responded to the growing evidence of progress in Iraq not with gratitude or relief, but with unrelenting opposition to a policy that is now clearly working. “Even as evidence has mounted that General Petraeus’ new counterinsurgency strategy is succeeding, anti-war advocates in Congress have remained emotionally invested in a narrative of retreat and defeat in Iraq — reluctant to acknowledge the reality of progress there. “Rather than supporting General Petraeus and our troops in the field, anti-war advocates in Congress are instead struggling to deny or disparage their achievements — and are now acting, once again, to hold hostage the funding our troops desperately need and to order a retreat by a date certain and regardless of what is happening on the ground. “It bears emphasizing that none of the progress we see today in Iraq would have happened, had these same anti-war activists prevailed in their earlier attempts this year to derail General Petraeus’ strategy. “In fact, throughout the past nine months, anti-war advocates in Congress have confidently and repeatedly predicted that General Petraeus’ strategy would fail, and that the war in Iraq was ‘lost.’ “It is now clear they were wrong. “Rather than another ill-advised, misguided attempt to cut off the funding for our troops in the field, it is time for anti-war forces to admit that the surge is working and stop their futile legislative harassments. “It is deeply irresponsible for anti-war forces in Congress to hold hostage the funds that our men and women in uniform need to continue their successful efforts. Congress should support our troops in Iraq, not undermine their heroic achievements by imposing a formula for failure.”
He’d make a great vice president.
