Murray predicts reform, challenges
The new Democratic Congress will demand more accountability on Iraq next year but is unlikely to exercise its ultimate authority by cutting off money for the war, Washington state’s senior U.S. senator said Monday.
“We have the power of the purse strings … but none of us are going to put our troops in jeopardy by not supplying them with the things they need,” Democrat Patty Murray said during an interview with The Spokesman-Review’s editorial board. Federal spending on things other than the war will be tighter, she said.
Murray will hold the No. 4 leadership post in the Senate when it reconvenes next month and was among senators from both parties who received a briefing from the Iraq Study Group last week. She called the group’s assessments “honest about where we were … pragmatic about where we need to go in the future.”
She also attended a White House meeting with President Bush on Friday, but got the feeling he wasn’t seriously considering the options at that point.
“I got the feeling he was checking off a box to say ‘I’ve talked to leaders of the Senate,’ ” she said.
Democrats will require Pentagon officials to spend more time explaining to Congress and the public what is happening in Iraq than Republicans did, Murray predicted.
“We have been short on oversight hearings,” she said. “We will be having a much more thorough review of what is happening.”
Congress might also insist that money spent on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, which could total $150 billion next year, be included in the federal budget, rather than being considered separately, or “off budget,” she said.
Murray voted against giving Bush the authority to send troops into Iraq in 2002, saying at the time the mission was unclear. She said Monday the mission was never defined, and the president still needs to define it for the nation.
On other spending issues, Murray said the new Congress will have to approve appropriations bills for the current fiscal year after it returns in January because the outgoing Congress did not. Projected shortfalls in federal revenue, along with a call for reform of earmarks – the process of putting money for specific projects into other legislation – will make it more difficult to find money for local programs, even though she’ll be the chairwoman of the Transportation and Housing subcommittee.
“Nobody can expect us to produce like Warren Magnuson did when he was in the majority,” she said, referring to the powerful senator from a generation ago.
A top priority for the Senate in the new year will be ethics reform, she said.
Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, the incoming majority leader, has promised to make the first bill the Senate considers an update of ethics policies. Reid faced questions of his own this year about a real estate transaction that wasn’t properly reported, and has said his bill will be “very strong,” Murray said.
Ethics reform will help regain some respect from a cynical public, she said, but so will “focusing on the people’s business.”
The public “watched a Congress for the last two years that was not focused on the issues they cared about,” Murray said.