The House voted Wednesday to authorize President Obama to train and equip Syrian rebel forces to combat the terrorist group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
The vote was 273 to 156 and came after six hours of debate, carried over two days, which showcased the intense divide within both Republican and Democratic parties over whether to greenlight another potentially extended U.S. military mission overseas.
Among Republicans, 71 voted against the measure, while 85 Democrats rejected it.
The authorization provision was requested by Obama and is an amendment to a must-pass federal spending bill to keep the government operating past the end of the Sept. 30 fiscal year, until Dec. 11, in the middle of the lame-duck session.
Like the Syrian authorization measure, the House passed the overall spending bill.
It now moves to the Senate, where another coalition of Republicans and Democrats is posed to clear the measure for Obama’s signature as early as Friday.
Final passage in the House was 319 to 108, with 53 Republicans and 55 Democrats voting against it.
Republican and Democratic leaders threw their support behind the resolution, saying it is needed to combat the barbaric Islamic State, which has beheaded two American journalists and a British aid worker.
“I support this amendment because America must lead,” Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wa., who is head of the House GOP conference, said. “When America sits on the sidelines, there is a leadership void which is filled by bad actors.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, said she believes Obama already has the authority to carry out the mission, and that is is not an authorization “to carry out military force” because no U.S. combat troops will be send to fight.
“We approve it to help the Syrian people take responsibility for building peace and stability in their country and stem the threat that [the Islamic State] can pose to U.S. interests abroad and to our national security,” Pelosi said.
Opposition was also bipartisan. Republicans and Democrats said the plan fell short of what is needed to extinguish the Islamic State.
“It will take way too long and the number of fighters trained will be too few to be truly effective in the fight against [the Islamic State],” Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, said.
Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, said the mission will end up arming the wrong people.
“In a confusing situation with warring factions on all sides, the last thing we should do is arm Islamic rebels to fight other Islamic rebels,” Hunter said. “We need to crush the Islamic State. We need to kill them and destroy them, and you don’t do that by training Islamic Syrians.”
The government spending package is capped at an annual rate of $1.012 trillion and it includes a provision to extend the Export Import Bank until June.
Boehner called passage of the resolution “an important, initial step forward in taking on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” which he said “represents a direct threat to the safety and security of the United States, and House Republicans are firmly committed to doing everything we can to help keep America safe.”
