[Sosfbay-discuss] House Dems ready to fund the Iraq War through 2009 (SF Chronicle)

[Drew Johnson]

House Democrats Look To Fund War Through 2009

By Zachary Coile
The San Francisco Chronicle, April 28, 2008
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/27/MNCU10BATO.DTL
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/28/8568/


House Democratic leaders are putting together the
largest Iraq war spending bill yet, a measure
that is expected to fund the war through the end
of the Bush presidency and for nearly six months
into the next president’s term.

The bill, which could be unveiled as early as
this week, signals that Democrats are resigned to
the fact they can’t change course in Iraq in the
final months of President Bush’s term. Instead,
the party is pinning its hopes of ending the war
on winning the White House in November.

Bay Area lawmakers, who represent perhaps the
most anti-war part of the country, acknowledge
the bill will anger many voters back home.

“It’s going to be a tough sell to convince people
in my district that funding the war for six
months into the new president’s term is the way
to end the war,” said Rep. Lynn Woolsey,
D-Petaluma, a leader of the Out of Iraq Caucus
who plans to oppose the funding. “It sounds like
we are paying for something we don’t want.”

The bill is expected to provide $108 billion that
the White House has requested for the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan. Lawmakers who are drafting
it say it also will include a so-called bridge
fund of $70 billion to give the new president
several months of breathing room before having to
ask Congress for more money.

The debate is shaping up as a key test for House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The San Francisco Democrat, who opposed the war
from the start, faces fierce criticism from the
anti-war left for refusing to cut off funding for
the war. She’s trying to hold together a caucus
split between anti-war lawmakers, who’d prefer a
showdown with the White House, and conservative
Democrats, who believe cutting off the war
funding would make the party look weak on
national security and put its majority at risk.
Guns-for-butter

Pelosi is plotting a “guns-for-butter” strategy
to try to force Bush to accept some new domestic
spending in exchange for the money he needs to
fight the war. The speaker is floating a proposal
to extend unemployment benefits for 13 weeks for
those whose benefits have run out. The package
also could include a new GI Bill benefit to help
veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan pay for
college.

Bush is already vowing to veto any spending that
goes over his $108 billion request. House
Republicans, eager for an election-year fight
with Democrats over spending, are pledging to
back up his veto threat.

“We’re going to insist that this is about funding
the troops and nothing else,” House Minority
Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said last week.

Pelosi has been trying to ease tensions within
her caucus over the bill. Anti-war lawmakers -
including Woolsey, Rep. Maxine Waters of Los
Angeles and Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland - met
with the speaker last week to urge her to keep
the votes on war spending and domestic spending
separate.

“We raised concerns,” Lee said. “It just wouldn’t
make sense to force (members of Congress) to
choose between providing food stamps for people
who are hurting and need help during this
terrible time and funding an occupation that
people do not support.”

House leaders may be able to get around the issue
by splitting the votes. Last May, Democrats used
a similar tactic, staging votes on two amendments
- one for $22 billion in domestic spending, and
another for $98 billion for the two wars - to
allow anti-war lawmakers to vote for the domestic
spending, but against the money for the war.

The strategy would let many Democratic lawmakers
register their opposition to the war, but it
wouldn’t change the outcome. The Senate would
eventually wrap all the spending into one package
to send to the White House for Bush’s signature.

Democrats may use the bill to put Republicans on
the defensive by offering an amendment to boost
tax incentives for renewable energy as well as
language that would block the administration from
implementing new rules that would cut Medicaid
payments and shift those costs to the states.

House leaders also may introduce an amendment
that would require Bush to use any new war money
only for redeploying U.S. troops from Iraq. Bush
vetoed a bill with similar language last year and
Democrats lacked the votes to override it. Still,
Democrats say it would remind voters that it’s
Bush and Republicans who are refusing to end the
war.

But anti-war activists say Democrats are being
disingenuous by claiming to oppose the war while
also preparing to give the president even more
war funding than he requested.

“They are the biggest hypocrites in the world,”
said Medea Benjamin, the San Francisco-based
founder of the anti-war group CodePink. “They
want to paint the Republicans as warmongers and
they want to keep funding the war, and they think
we don’t see through this?”

Bay Area anti-war activists met at Oakland’s
Grand Lake Theater last week to discuss ways to
protest the war spending bill. CodePink plans to
renew its protests outside Pelosi’s home in San
Francisco and at lawmakers’ offices, Benjamin
said.
Pelosi on hot seat

Pelosi was pressed on the issue last week during
a sit-down with CNN’s Larry King. “Your party
became the majority in the House primarily
pledging to end the war,” King said. “That didn’t
happen.”

“No,” Pelosi acknowledged. “It didn’t happen
because we had hoped that the president would
listen to the will of the people and at least be
willing to compromise on 
 how the war is
conducted and some timetable for redeployment of
our troops.”

Congress watchers said Democrats are still stung
after losing repeated battles with the White
House and Republicans over the war last year.

“Last year they tried a lot of confrontation and
they went nowhere,” said Louis Fisher, a
constitutional scholar at the Library of Congress
and an expert on congressional war powers. He
said Democrats still fear being portrayed as
putting U.S. troops at risk if they try to shut
off war funds.

“That argument seems to win almost every time,”
Fisher said. “Look how long it took to cut off
the funding in Vietnam. It wasn’t until the
summer of 1973.”

Congressional scholar Thomas Mann of the
Brookings Institution said House leaders are
making a wise choice to give a new president,
whether Democrat or Republican, some time to
chart a new course in Iraq. He noted that even
the Democratic presidential candidates, Sens.
Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, have
said it would take a few months to begin
withdrawing troops.

Democrats in Congress may risk frustrating their
base by funding the war into next year, but Mann
said it’s unlikely to hurt them in the November
election. The public still generally sees the
Iraq conflict as Bush’s war, he said.

“This only becomes a Democratic war if a
Democratic president fails to deliver on his or
her promise to end the war,” Mann said.


E-mail Zachary Coile at zcoile at sfchronicle.com.

© 2008 The San Francisco Chronicle





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