President Bush on Tuesday accused Democrats of pandering to liberals by balking at war funding, which he said will force troops to serve longer and more frequently in Iraq.
“Congress’ failure to fund our troops on the front lines will mean that some of our military families could wait longer for their loved ones to return from the front lines, and others could see their loved ones headed back to the war sooner than they need to,” Bush said in a Rose Garden news conference. “That is unacceptable to me, and I believe it is unacceptable to the American people.”
Bush railed against the Democratic-controlled Congress for going “on vacation” without sending him a bill it passed that links war funding to unrelated spending and timetables for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. Bush wants to veto the bill and then ratchet up pressure on Democrats, who lack the votes to override his veto, to send him a “clean” spending bill.
Bush complained that Democrats are trying to end the U.S. mission in Iraq though only 40 percent of reinforcements in the president’s planned “surge” of troops have been deployed. He explained that Democrats are under increasing pressure from their liberal base to cut off funding for the war.
“There’s been a political dance going on here in Washington,” Bush said. “In other words, people trying to appeal to one side of their party.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and fellow Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin announced Monday that if Bush vetoes the war–funding bill, they will push legislation to end the war by cutting off funds.
“The president says he supports our troops, yet he wants to keep them in the middle of an Iraqi civil war indefinitely,” Feingold said after Bush’s news conference. “We cannot afford to continue the president’s disastrous Iraq policy, which has weakened our national security.”
When asked by The Examiner about the Reid-Feingold bill, Bush warned that cutting off funds to troops would have disastrous consequences in Baghdad and beyond.
“You don’t hear a lot of debate about Washington as to what will happen if there is failure,” he said. “I believe that if this capital city were to fall into chaos — which is where it was headed prior to reinforcing — that there’d be no chance for this young democracy to survive.”
