Senate approves $70 billion for wars

The Senate on Tuesday night handed President Bush a critical victory in the Iraq debate, approving billions of dollars for war operations and backing down from a months-long threat of withholding funding until the White House commits to a drawdown of troops.

{mosads}After falling short on two attempts to force a change in war tactics, 21 Democrats joined one independent and 48 Republicans to approve $70 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which will be packaged with a sprawling $516 billion omnibus spending bill that would fund most federal agencies. Sen. Gordon Smith, who faces a tough reelection race in 2008 in Oregon, was the only Republican to vote against the war-funding plan. 

The Senate later approved the massive spending bill by a 76-17 vote, moving one step closer to finishing its work for the year and ending the yearlong budget standoff between the White House and Congress.

The 70-25 vote on the war funding measure caps a year of unsuccessful Democratic attempts to sufficiently chip away at solid GOP support for the war. Ultimately, Democratic leaders declined to levy pressure on their caucus to block the latest round of unfettered Iraq money. Sixty votes were required for the amendment to be adopted.

Arizona Republican John McCain, a stalwart war supporter, was the only one of the Senate’s five presidential candidates present for the vote on the amendment, which he supported.

The measure now moves to the House, which is expected to clear the bill later this week and send it to the president’s desk.

The approval of the measure marks a sharp turn from the hard-line positions Democrats took in November. At the time, they warned that Republicans and the White House would have to accept a funding bill with a provision calling for a complete troop withdrawal from Iraq by next December, or face the prospect of funding the war through the Pentagon’s fiscal 2008 spending bill.

But Republicans refused to capitulate, and the White House warned that failing to pass a portion of the president’s $196 billion Iraq war supplemental funding bill would result in hundreds of thousands of Pentagon employees losing their jobs just before Christmas.

Democrats appeared unmoved by the threats, saying they refused to give Bush a “blank check” for the war.

“If the president is not willing to take that with some conditions on it . . . then the president won’t get his $50 billion,” Senate Majority Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said last month of a Democratic plan in November to tie $50 billion in interim war funding with a timetable for troop withdrawal. “That’s pretty clear.”

But Reid’s plan fell seven short of the 60 needed to take up the bill in November.

With Iraq funding stalled, the White House was left with a huge bargaining chip to ensure that it would get its war money: the omnibus appropriations bill, which packages 11 outstanding annual spending bills and includes thousands of pet projects and policy priorities of Republicans and Democrats alike.

Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, said Tuesday that Bush would not accept the omnibus plan without funding for the Iraq war.

“If that amendment does not pass and the bill comes to the president’s desk without it, then he will veto it,” Perino said of the amendment, which was sponsored by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.).

Despite their frustration with their inability to change the course of the war, Senate Democrats were split on whether to withhold funding for Iraq, and leaders were reluctant to see their year-end budget plans fall apart.

“It’s a matter for each member to decide,” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said ahead of the vote. “When it comes to funding, we found it’s a different issue. There are some members opposed to the war who will not vote against funding.”

Indeed, Sens. Carl Levin (Mich.) and Jim Webb (Va.), two Democrats who have led the fight to change course in Iraq, both voted for the $70 billion amendment. Levin was the author of a non-binding resolution calling for a change to more limited missions in Iraq, which failed by a 50-45 vote.

Similarly, McConnell moved to ensure that the carefully negotiated year-end budget plan did not prompt objections from some of the more conservative members of the caucus concerned about the pet projects and price tag of the massive bill.

Sens. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) both declined to use procedural tactics to hold up the bill, saying such an effort would be fruitless and only serve to anger senators eager to return home for the holidays.

“The outcome would be the same, and I know I’d make everyone mad,” Coburn said.