Congress finally wraps ’07

The House voted 272-142 for a $555 billion spending package Wednesday, including $70 billion in unfettered funding for Iraq, sending Congress home for the year.

Passage of the Iraq funding measure meant the Democrats capitulated to President Bush on the last day of their first year back in power. Shortly before the spending vote, Congress voted to bend to Bush’s will on the Alternative Minimum Tax.

{mosads}Because of the Iraq money, many Democrats voted no on the measure, including House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.). House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) voted yes, as did House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio).

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) did not vote. She does not vote on most bills, but has often voted on Iraq measures. In May, when Congress voted to give Bush supplemental Iraq spending money, she voted no.

Pelosi called the inability of the Democratic Congress to force withdrawal of troops from Iraq her “biggest disappointment.”

Republicans declared victory on the Iraq funding issue, while some anti-war members said the Iraq fight is being punted from the halls of Congress to the presidential election. But Pelosi said Democrats will keep up the fight next year.

“We will be relentless in our disagreement,” Pelosi said in a lengthy end-of-session briefing with reporters. “We are not resigned to anything. We don’t have another year of lives to lose. We don’t have another year of prestige to lose in the world.”

She said that fights over funding will continue, but that there will be a renewed fight over policy-oriented bills like demanding more time between deployments.

“There’s a strong interest in the House in looking at policy issues rather than just the funding side,” Pelosi said. “We want to look at policy decisions that could get past the 60-vote barrier.”

The House approved the $70 billion as part of the omnibus spending measure to close out legislative business and send lawmakers home for the year.

“It would certainly appear that the forces of MoveOn and Code Pink have been defeated,” said Rep. Adam Putnam (Fla.), chairman of the House Republican Conference. “The winners are the troops who will get the funding they need.”

But war opponents say the vote is  simply the recognition that the real political fight on war policy is the 2008 election, not floor fights in the House or the Senate.

“Everything will change when we get a nominee,” said Moira Mack, spokeswoman for Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, which includes MoveOn.org and other liberal groups. “The anti-war movement is still strong.”

Others noted, however, that passing an expensive, unpopular war on to a new Democratic president has been a key fear of Democrats in the war debate.

“We’re not going to let Republicans and this president kick the ball down the field and kick it to the next president,” said Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.). “We’re going to regroup and figure out some new tactics. We’re going to be creative.”

Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) said he senses resignation and frustration among members of the anti-war movement, but also recognition that Democrats in Congress do not have the ability to end the war. He said that Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (I-Conn.) support for the war has made their efforts especially difficult.

“They’ve begun to realize the peculiarities of the legislative process,” said Moran, an ardent opponent of the war. “A Democratic majority only works on certain issues. With Joe voting the other way, we really don’t have a majority on the war in the Senate.”

Pelosi voiced particular frustration with the Senate. She was careful to avoid directly criticizing Senate Democratic leaders, but lashed out at Senate Republicans and the Senate rules that block any bill that does not have a 60-vote supermajority.

“If it weren’t for those 60 votes, think of all the things we could have passed,” Pelosi said. “Sixty votes [are] almost to the point of not reflecting the will of the American people. It’s a barrier to everything we do in the House.”

Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), who has taken an increasingly anti-war stance, saw her legislation requiring more “dwell time” for troops stall in the Senate earlier this year. On Wednesday, she voiced similar frustration.

“Our majority in the House is almost wasted” on the war issue, Tauscher said. “We cannot have our will prevail right now.”

But House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Democrats can hold up some accomplishments on the war, starting with the ouster of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the wake of the Democratic electoral victory last year.

“I think Democrats have had great success in doing what we could, given the president’s support … from at least a third of the House and the Senate on this issue,” Hoyer said earlier this week. “We’ve had a modification in policy that many cannot see.”

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) joined in by noting that Bush did not get the full $196 billion he had requested for the war.

 “This is the first time this president made a request for funding and didn’t get it,” Emanuel said.