House Democrats hope to pass several anti-war measures this week before departing for a month-long recess, but time and internal disagreements over language could limit those efforts.
Despite a heavy workload that likely will include consideration of at least two spending bills, a $90 billion health care initiative and a lobbying and ethics reform plan, Democrats want to push through a measure unsuccessfully introduced in the Senate by Jim Webb, D-Va., that would provide longer rest periods for troops before they are redeployed to Iraq.
Democrats also will attempt to pass a measure that would cut off funding for the detention camp at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base within six months.
The provisions may be attached to a fiscal 2008 defense spending bill the House will consider. While the measures have almost no chance of every becominglaw, Democrats are eager to go on record in support of them in order to appease their anti-war base.
“It’s about message,” said Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., the chief anti-war spokesman in the House and chairman of the defense spending panel. “When members go home, they want to have voted on something.”
Democrats appear unlikely to take up a measure proposed by Murtha that would establish a 60-day deadline for the beginning of troop withdrawal. Equally unlikely is consideration of a slightly different proposal that would require President Bush to devise a plan to withdraw troops from Iraq within 60 days.
Both of those measures drew criticism from the most liberal wing of the Democratic caucus. Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., a member of the progressive wing of the caucus, said many Democrats are satisfied with legislation passed earlier in the House, but which never became law, that sets a firm timeline for withdrawing troops.
“We gave them a date certain,” Woolsey said. “Why go backwards?”
Republican aides said they expect GOP lawmakers to vote against any Iraq initiative put forward by the Democrats next week. The Senate does not intend to take up any Iraq-related legislation next week, said an aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
Like the House, the Senate is expected to struggle to pass an expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program that Republicans oppose. The legislation expands coverage to include those in higher income brackets and is paid for in part by a 45-cent cigarette tax.
