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In a bid to break the Senate’s stalemate on Iraq, Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) is working with a key appropriator on a strategy to slice the White House’s war funding request to pressure President Bush into changing course in Iraq. Levin said Wednesday that giving Bush a six-month installment plan on the nearly $200 billion fiscal year 2008 war-funding request would serve a dual purpose: intensifying pressure on the president to change course after next June, and avoiding “sending a negative message to the troops” because war funding would continue. Forcing Bush to seek a second supplemental for fiscal year 2008 would add a fresh dose of presidential politics to the debate with campaign season moving into high gear early next summer. “We ought to… put that kind of pressure on the administration by taking a positive act, which is providing funding for the troops, and doing it for a period which requires revisiting this issue after the president reports to us next spring,” Levin told reporters at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. Next March, Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, will report to Congress on the status of the war. With the 110th Congress unlikely to approve measures requiring troops to come home from Iraq, attaching strings to the supplemental funding request represents the Democrats’ most viable chance to force changes to Bush’s war policy. The emerging strategy could pick up steam within the Democratic caucus, but is likely to generate Republican opposition. Levin, who said he is working with Appropriations Committee member Jack Reed (D-R.I.), also signaled that Democrats may add to the supplemental a nine-month goal to complete the withdrawal from Iraq. Some centrist Republicans have been open to the idea of a timetable for withdrawal, but have called for the goal to be 15 months. Levin said adding the language in the Appropriations Committee would turn tables on Republicans by forcing them to reach the 60 votes needed on the floor to strip out the language. Levin said he and Reed have not settled on a dollar figure for a six-month installment plan. He also said it was unclear whether such a plan would garner the support of other Democrats on the Appropriations Committee, as well as Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). But he said that the idea has been presented to Appropriations Chairman Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) as well as Reid. “He is now one of these people who now know about this concept,” Levin said of Reid. |
