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Iraq Study Group plan puts Dems in defense-bill bind |
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By Elana Schor and Manu Raju
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Posted: 07/10/07 07:21 PM [ET] |
A bipartisan proposal to implement the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations is gaining momentum among Senate Republicans, but is putting Democrats in a tough position with an anti-war base that wants the chamber to take a much harder line during this month’s Iraq war debate.
Recognizing that concern, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) yesterday said he wants the sponsors of the measure to “put some teeth in it.” Reid said he had not decided whether to allow a floor vote on the amendment during debate over the defense authorization bill, which will dominate the Senate floor over the next two weeks.
If the amendment is offered to the bill, it may well become the strongest Iraq language that reaches the pivotal 60-vote mark. Democratic leaders know that scenario would almost certainly increase tension with their base, which harshly criticized the new majority’s approach to the war supplemental spending bill earlier this year.
“It certainly is not enough for that part of the base,” a Senate Democratic leadership aide said.
Moreover, Republicans view the Iraq Study Group bill as an opening to overshadow the Democrats’ Iraq pullout push, conscious that the combination of non-binding withdrawal goals and diplomatic conditions could win more GOP supporters than any plan created by the new majority.
“I think that’s the biggest fear Democrats have,” one senior Republican aide said. “It would be really embarrassing for Reid, because the guy who’s pushing for all these things to make his base happy would [have to back] something the president has pushed for.”
The White House slowly has embraced portions of the Iraq Study Group report.
The amendment — drafted by Sens. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) — would call on the White House to implement the recommendations of the 2006 Iraq Study Group report. The two senators are discussing strategy almost daily this week and plan to sit down with their leaders and cosponsors before deciding whether to push an amendment on the defense authorization bill, sources said yesterday.
The measure calls for a shift in strategy from a military focus to a political one, seeks a new oil revenue law in Iraq and says most U.S. combat troops “could” be redeployed from Iraq by early 2008.
With public dissent at an all-time high over the Iraq war, Republican divisions are growing and their conference has yet to coalesce around a single proposal over war strategy. Most want the Senate to wait until September when Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, reports to Congress on the progress of the Iraq war and the troop surge Bush announced in January.
Yesterday another influential Republican in the debate, Virginia’s John Warner, who has been increasingly critical of the Iraq war, said he would withhold his position until July 15, when an interim progress report is due. Warner in the past had suggested he would support a measure calling for a new authorization of the war, but had not said how he would proceed during this month’s debate.
“It seems to me, in deference, we should hear the president out before we begin to adopt certain amendments and make decisions,” Warner said.
Warner would not say whether he would support the Iraq Study Group measure. But as the trickle of Republicans calling for a troop drawdown in Iraq threatens to become an onrush, the time may be now for Salazar and Alexander to take advantage of new support.
Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) shocked Washington last week by criticizing the president’s war strategy and signing on to the study group bill, days after Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) called the study group report “a template for bipartisan cooperation.” Of the 57 cosponsors of the bill’s House counterpart, 32 are Republicans.
Alexander said in an interview that the defense bill “very well may be” the best chance for he and Salazar to influence the war debate.
He pointed out that the bill provides the president latitude to adjust the study group’s recommendations based on the situation on the ground.
That latitude, however, is a significant problem for anti-war activists. They blast the study group bill as a tool to give cover to Republicans running scared from voters increasingly clamorous for withdrawal.
“This toothless legislation is nothing but a life preserver to keep Republicans from drowning in a sea of public unrest about the war,” a spokeswoman for the coalition Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, Moira Mack, said. “If senators like Domenici and others are serious about changing course and ending the war, they need to vote for bills that do that, and this one doesn’t.”
For their part, Democrats are calling on those Republicans who have voiced objections to turn their objections into votes for stronger language on the Iraq war.
Democrats plan to push several amendments, including one that would revoke the 2002 authorization of the war, another to call for a troop withdrawal from Iraq within 120 days and one that would seek to prohibit spending on a future military presence in Iraq after April 2008. The Senate is expected today to vote on an amendment by Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) that would set stronger troop-readiness standards.
But nothing short of a firm timetable for immediate withdrawal will stop the growing chorus of criticism from their base.
“I think the Democrats don’t get that by all this pussyfooting around, they’re showing themselves as inept and unable to get the job done,” said Sue Udry, legislative action coordinator for the United for Peace and Justice coalition.
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