On The Horizon: Attempts To Block Funding
Sharpen your (debating) knives (hey, I’m not a violent person), because the Democrats are not going to stop with the ‘anti-surge’ resolution. Instead, as Dick Polman (no fan of the Bush Administration or the war) details here, it’s just the ‘first step’:
The debate in the House of Representatives over the war in Iraq, which started today after four years of institutional torpor, is actually an elaborate game of pretend. The Democratic leaders are pretending that they have no antiwar agenda beyond the passage of a mild resolution that “disapproves” of President Bush’s troop escalation. And the Republican leaders are pretending that they actually still have faith in what Bush is doing.The Democratic pretense was obvious on Sunday, when Hoyer appeared with House GOP leader John Boehner on Meet the Press. Boehner quickly baited Hoyer by contending, “Let’s be honest about it. What we’re going to be doing this week is the first step in your effort to cut off funds for troops.” And Hoyer replied, “No, our resolution does not say anything about cutting off funds, John.”
Hoyer was correct, in the literal sense, when he said that the resolution doesn’t talk about funding cutoffs. But he was incorrect to imply that Democrats don’t see the resolution as the crucial first step toward a more substantive antiwar agenda. Of course they do – because their own people have said so.
For instance, it has been widely reported that Speaker Pelosi has already met with the liberals in her caucus, and urged them to back the non-binding resolution as merely the first step. And some Democratic members haven’t been shy about saying so. Carol Shea-Porter, who was elected last November amidst antiwar fervor in New Hampshire, has referred to the resolution as “training wheels for the real thing,” and Joe Sestak, the former three-star admiral who was elected last November in suburban Philadelphia, has already introduced a bill calling for a funding cutoff on Dec. 31. He has called the resolution “necessary” but “insufficient.” This afternoon, during the House debate, Democratic congresswoman Lynn Woolsley touted her own bill to pull out troops within six months of enactment, and warned that, after the nonbinding resolution is passed, “This body will have no choice but to take further steps.”
“A vote of diapproval will set the stage for additional Iraq war legislation,” Pelosi said during her speech on the House floor Tuesday. While offering generous words of praise for American soldiers in Iraq, California Democrat Tom Lantos, the chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, said the vote on Resolution 63 will be the “first step on their journey home.” House majority leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland issued a public statement saying that this week’s debate is “a first step in our continuing efforts to affect Iraq policy.” House majority whip James Clyburn of South Carolina issued a similar statement.
There are two ways to view such rhetoric. One is to dismiss it as vaporous, a meaningless gesture in the direction of the antiwar left, whose partisans want the Congress to take immediate, concrete steps to force America to “redeploy” from Iraq. This is something that the nonbinding resolution will not–cannot–do. But the other way to view the leaders’ utterances is to take them seriously. In this view, passage of the nonbinding resolution will test the waters of public opinion. If the public doesn’t reject Congress’s actions, and it probably won’t, then the majority will have gained some degree of legitimacy to press matters further. And they will be able to do that later this spring, when Congress considers supplemental appropriations bills for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the Fiscal Year 2008 Defense Appropriation Bill. Already several of the Democrats who have taken to the House floor have said they believe Resolution 63 does not go far enough; that they look forward to de-funding Bush’s “escalation” of the war.
I truly believe two things: this will be a disaster if it passes, not only for the country, but for the Democrats, as it gives Republican partisans the very tool they need to escape ‘blame’ for Iraq: a scapegoat (you can hear the cries now, fair or not: we’d have won the war if the Democrats hadn’t yanked the funding). The other thing I believe is the Democrats are far too beholden to their liberal activisit base to turn back.
Oh, and a third thing I believe – the bipartisan spirit promised by the new Democratic majority has flown the coop, just as all such promises do. And the final thing I believe – I was a fool to believe otherwise, no matter how briefly…
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