Dems signal new strategy as Reid eyes votes on Iraq

Democratic leaders are negotiating a new strategy on Iraq and will squeeze in votes on the war during the jam-packed schedule leading up to Christmas Day, the Senate’s top Democrat said Monday.

“I think we have to address war funding this month for Iraq,” Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters Monday. “We have a wide range of alternatives, and we don’t have any of it worked out today.”

{mosads}Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democrats are hammering out a strategy for year-end Iraq votes that will include measures tying additional funding for the war to restrictions on President Bush’s war policy. Reid also said Monday that he is not “trading” a clean Iraq war spending bill for the $11 billion in extra domestic spending Democrats have been seeking to add to Bush’s budget for fiscal 2008.

Scheduling Iraq votes is a shift in strategy from before the two-week Thanksgiving recess, when Democratic leaders signaled that there would be no more legislative action on the war for the year. At the time, Democrats also said that the Pentagon would have to pay for the war through its regular $460 billion war spending appropriation unless Bush agreed to a timetable for troop withdrawal.

Since then, the White House has pushed back hard, warning that civilian employees will be laid off unless Congress acts on the $196 billion war-funding request Bush has proposed for fiscal 2008.

President Bush is “not leveling with the American people” with his threats over the drastic consequences of withholding the supplemental funding bill, Reid told reporters on Monday. “People know how I feel about his credibility,” he said.

Reid said the Democrats are trying to determine which Iraq bills to bring up this month. Reid said they are working on “other alternatives” in addition to bringing up a $50 billion bill that called for troops to leave Iraq by December 2008, which passed the House but was rejected by the Senate just before the Thanksgiving recess.

Bush had sharp words for Democrats on Monday, saying in remarks at the Rose Garden that Congress is squeezing a year’s worth of work into the last month of the year. “The end of 2007 is approaching fast, and the new Congress has little to show for it,” Bush said.

On the spending battle, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) suggested that — in light of the tight floor schedule — more money for the Iraq war would have to be added to the $11 billion omnibus spending plan that Democratic leaders and appropriators are drafting. The Senate on Tuesday moves to a free trade agreement with Peru, and has a laundry list of items to consider, including a domestic surveillance bill, a bicameral energy bill and a repeal of the Alternative Minimum Tax.

While it’s unclear whether Democrats will add war funding to the omnibus spending measure for the federal government, Reid said he is opposed to funding the government by way of a continuing resolution (CR) through next year.

“I feel very strongly that we need to fund the government, that I do not want to leave this year, or this congressional session, without passing appropriation bills,” Reid said. “I’m going to do everything within my power to make sure that we don’t do another CR.”