GOP senators block debate, Iraq vote

WASHINGTON – Senate Republicans on Saturday killed a Democratic effort to pass a symbolic resolution opposing President Bush’s troop buildup in Iraq.

Democrats, who hold a narrow majority in the Senate, fell four votes shy of the 60 needed on a procedural vote to consider the nonbinding resolution. The 56-34 vote came a day after the Democratic-controlled House, in a largely party-line vote, rebuked Bush’s war strategy after four days of often heated debate.

The rare Saturday session of the Senate lasted only about 3 1/2 hours, but was no less intense.

“The United States Senate, the greatest deliberative body in the whole world, is probably the only place (in America not debating the war),” said Robert Byrd, D-W.Va.

Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., accused Republicans of trying to protect the president from an embarrassing vote. He said that he would no longer push for a vote on the nonbinding resolution but that war would remain center stage in the Senate.

“This war is too important to permit Senate Republicans to brush it aside,” he said. “The Senate will keep fighting to force President Bush to change course.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., accused Democrats of playing “stupid political games.”

“This is a low point in my time in the Senate,” he said.

The Senate was scheduled to begin a weeklong recess Saturday, but Reid kept the chamber in session, saying it was important to get senators on the record on the issue. Nine Republican senators skipped the vote.

After the Senate returns from its weeklong recess, both parties are expected to try to attach war-related amendments to legislation – including a GOP effort to press for a vote on their resolution opposing any cut in funding for the troops.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., on Saturday introduced a resolution setting Dec. 31, 2007 as the expiration date for the 2002 congressional resolution that authorized the U.S.-led invasion against Iraq and requiring the president to return to Congress if he wants to extend it.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., on Friday introduced legislation that she said would cap the level of U.S. troops in Iraq at the number before the president’s buildup and begin a phased redeployment of U.S. troops out of Iraq in 90 days. Her proposal also would prohibit the use of funds to send troops to Iraq, it said, “unless they have the proper equipment and training.”

Tom Matzzie, Washington, D.C., director of the liberal MoveOn.org Political Action, said Saturday that Republican senators had given Bush “a green light to escalate (the war).”

Freshman Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., lamented, “The Senate can’t seem to do anything but debate about whether or not to debate.”

Republicans said they were prepared to debate the war but only if Democrats would allow consideration of an alternative resolution opposing any cut in funding for the troops.

A Reid spokesman said the Democratic leader didn’t want to include the resolution opposing a cut in funding because it would be a distraction from a “yes or no vote on the escalation.” The spokesman said that Reid offered to permit Republicans to bring their resolution at another time.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said: “We will not be forced to vote for a resolution that says we support the troops but does not ask us to seal that pledge with a promise to help them carry out that mission in the only way they can – funding their mission.”

Republicans have contended that the nonbinding resolution is a prelude to Democratic efforts to withhold funding for the war. “The Senate was created to block that kind of dealing, and today it stops at the doors of this chamber,” McConnell said.

With Democrats threatening to attach strings to the president’s request for additional war funding, the White House issued a statement Saturday saying that the next votes in Congress should “provide unmistakable assurance of this nation’s resolve in achieving success (in the war on terror).”

The resolution the Senate was considering taking up is the same one the House passed on Friday. It consists of two short sentences, the first stating that “Congress and the American people will continue to support and protect (U.S. forces serving in Iraq),” a phrase Democrats hoped would undercut attacks that they are undermining the troops.

Part of the second sentence says Congress “disapproves of the decision” Bush announced in a nationally televised speech Jan. 10 to add 21,500 troops to the 135,000-plus in Iraq.

Although the Senate’s resolution died, Democrats picked up the support of seven Republicans, five more than from an earlier vote on a similar measure. Five of the seven are up for re-election in 2008.