WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday defeated legislation that would have funded the war in Iraq for another year, in a surprise move that the Senate could overturn.
By a vote of 149-141, the Democrat-controlled House rejected a measure that would have given the Pentagon $162.5 billion to keep the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan running through next summer, slightly below President George W. Bush’s request.
A large group of anti-war House Democrats voted against the funds. That, coupled with 132 Republicans voting “present,” meaning neither “yes” nor “no,” killed the measure for now.
But the Senate is expected to debate its version of a war-funding bill possibly next week and is likely to resurrect the money for the coming year.
But the Senate is expected to debate its version of a war-funding bill possibly next week and is likely to resurrect the money for the coming year.
To which bill, the Senate Appropriatons Committee this afternoon attached Senator Dianne Feinstein’s ag-amnesty amendment to cover over one million illegal agricultural workers and their families.
Some Republicans said they were protesting the way Democrats brought the legislation to the House floor without House Appropriations Committee consideration.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, told reporters he expects the Senate to restore the war funding and give House Republicans another chance to approve it.
The White House has issued a veto threat against setting dates for withdrawing U.S. combat troops from Iraq as part of a war-funding bill. President George W. Bush vetoed such a measure a year ago.
“The legislation provides for a new direction in Iraq that will end this sad chapter in America’s history and bring home our brave men and women in uniform,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, told reporters before the vote.
But in the face of the veto threat and Senate Republican opposition, even some House Democratic leaders acknowledged that their troop withdrawal plan likely would be abandoned before war funds are ultimately sent to Bush for his approval.
The House bill “seeks to tie the hands of our military commanders and impose an artificial timeline for withdrawal,” the White House said.
Lawmakers may fall short of the goal of passing a final version of the legislation, which also expands U.S. food aid abroad, by the end of May, when a congressional recess begins.
The Pentagon says it needs the money by sometime in June.
Sure, support the troops by bringing them home so they won’t be killed.
Well, uh, yeah man, why should they have to die there, they should have to come back here and die with the rest of us when Obambi-wan ushers in the age of unbridled appeasement!
And remember, both polls oversampled democrats again, by almost double digits! That means DEMOCRATS do not like the democrat congress..I’m not even sure the democrat congress likes the democrat congress.
The republicans problem is that they are seen as ignoring the base and as arogant asses by that base. The democrats problem is an excess of grasping for power and pandering. Neither party is loved.
The House just voted on the war supplemental. One amendment to the bill would raise taxes by 1/2 percent on people making over $500,000 a year (a lot of small business whose owners probably don’t consider themselves rich file their business income on their individual tax return). The Democrats had the gall to call it the “Patriot Tax.” The amendment passed, 256-166, with an astounding 32 Republicans voting for it.
House minority leader John Boehner accused the Democrats of “playing political games” for stacking the spending bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with what he and other Republicans have called extraneous spending.
Boehner and his GOP colleagues didn’t like a provision to extend unemployment benefits, or the Democrats call to raise taxes on wealthy Americans to pay for an overhaul of the GI Bill. They adamantly opposed including language in the measure that would have required President Bush to begin pulling out troops from Iraq within 30 days once the bill becomes law.
When it came time to vote today on the $163 billion supplemental to pay for the wars, the Republicans decided to clean their hands of a measure that the White House had already threatened to veto.
The Democratic-led House approved more money for the jobless and boosted GI education benefits, but dozens of Republicans unexpectedly voted “present” to spend $163 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, thus blocking the bill from winning approval.
The Democratic leadership split the measure into three parts, so the antiwar members of their party could vote against further war spending, while voting in favor of the overhaul of the GI Bill and extension of the unemployment benefits.
But with 133 Republicans voting present, the bill was defeated by 149-to-141 margin.
“Members voted present today to protest the fact that the exercise that took place on the House floor was nothing more than a cynical scheme to deny our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan the resources they need for success,” Boehner said.
