House war-funding plan faces veto as senators weigh options

House Democrats’ plan to pay for the Iraq war in two installments earned an early White House veto threat yesterday, while senators turned their attention to two options emerging from bipartisan talks on the next supplemental.

The House’s new war supplemental, slated for floor debate today and tomorrow, would withhold half of this year’s Iraq funds pending a second vote after lawmakers receive progress reports on President Bush’s troop escalation in July. Yet Bush considers the second House supplemental still too restrictive and would veto it, White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters yesterday.

{mosads}Defense Secretary Robert Gates also criticized the House approach, telling Senate appropriators yesterday, “We just don’t have the ability to manage a two-month appropriation very well.”

The promised veto may become irrelevant, as the Senate continued down its own path on a supplemental that Democrats aim to finish by Memorial Day. Sens. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) have proposed that Gen. David Petraeus submit a plan for troop redeployment if the Iraqi government fails to meet certain benchmarks within four months.

Swing-vote senators such as Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) and Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) said they would look at the Snowe-Bayh plan, but Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) raised a question about the Petraeus mandate.

Nelson supports the benchmarks and progress-report concepts, helping to include similar language in the first supplemental, communications director David DiMartino said via e-mail.

“He is concerned about the requirement asking General Petraeus to submit a redeployment plan to Congress because of questions about the chain of command,” DiMartino said.

Adm. William Fallon, chief of U.S. Central Command, told Nelson last week that he expects Petraeus to offer any redeployment recommendations to Fallon, his military supervisor.

Nelson, meanwhile, is working with several centrist senators from both parties on a benchmarks proposal tied to Iraqi reconstruction aid and focusing on a comprehensive progress report in September. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) has said lawmakers could assess the progress of the troop escalation by that time.

“I haven’t heard any serious acceptance of a bifurcation of troop funds,” Nelson said of the House plan, adding: “This is not a place to split the baby.”

September was also the topic when Bush sat down late Tuesday with 14 House Blue Dog Democrats. Rep. Lincoln Davis (D-Tenn.) said Bush told him that month is the time to weigh whether the escalation has worked.

If Bush’s policy is deemed a failure then, Davis said, “I expect a change in policy or I won’t vote for any further funding.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) issued a statement calling Bush’s veto threat “confrontation over cooperation,” but Pelosi’s ally Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) had stronger words for Iraqi national security adviser Muwafaq al-Rubaie during his Hill visit this week.

Murtha recapped his message to al-Rubaie for reporters: “You better prepare for a redeployment. If you have a Democratic president in 2008, as I think there will be, you could have a precipitous withdrawal.”

Jonathan E. Kaplan and Mike Soraghan contributed to this article.