Democrats Pass Iraq Appropriations Bill

This article summarizes the House’s 218-212 vote to approve an appropriations bill that not only allocates $128 million to American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan but also requires American forces to withdraw from Iraq no later than September 2008, possibly sooner depending on the extent to which the Iraqi government complies with or violates specific terms not elaborated upon in the article. I used THOMAS to search for the bill, but there were so many similar-sounding bills that have received recent floor action that I decided to just use the information from the article. Such articles really should include the short title of the bill and/or the bill number. Anyway, Bush was right in more ways than one when he opined, “Political theater…These Democrats believe that the longer they can delay funding for our troops, the more likely they are to force me to accept restrictions on our commanders, an artificial timetable for withdrawal and their pet spending projects.” The Dems are likely to continue their battle against Bush’s war well into the summer due to their electoral mandate, and the sheer number of bills about what to do with the Iraq war (over a hundred on both houses) taxes the limit of how many of the roll call votes any given representative or senator can be in attendance for. As stated on page 118 of Steve Smith’s [u]The American Congress[u], it is very difficult for any member of Congress to be present for all roll call votes. The availability of Congressional members interacts with the large number of Iraq-related bills to produce a chaotic effect that is tempered primarily by W the veto actor. Meanwhile, domestic bills that Bush is less likely to veto fall by the wayside.