Short-term war funding bill may not fly in Senate
House plan would guarantee funding for operations in Iraq through July, but would tie additional installments to benchmarks.
A House-backed plan to send President Bush a supplemental spending bill to fund the war only through July is not likely to get through the Senate, an aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Monday.
"It's not anything that will fly in the Senate," spokesman Jim Manley said.
Manley's comments and earlier opposition from Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., are likely to complicate efforts by the White House and congressional leaders to wrap up a new spending bill before the Memorial Day recess later this month.
The House plan, backed by House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Murtha, D-Pa., would guarantee funding for U.S. operations in Iraq through July -- two months short of the end of the fiscal year -- and would tie approval of additional funding to the Iraqi government and military meeting certain benchmarks for progress.
Levin, in a conference call late last month, sounded a skeptical note about any supplemental funding measure that did not cover the rest of the fiscal year, saying: "I don't think that is the best approach ... We have got to do something that lasts through Sept. 30."
One problem, he said, is that funding that ends in July might leave the impression that lawmakers favored cutting off funding for U.S. troops. "I don't think anyone supports cutting funding for the troops, so we might as well take that off the table, as far as I'm concerned," he said.
Bush's veto of the first supplemental measure, which included a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, kicked off negotiations for a new spending bill.
Murtha's proposal of funding for just a few months and tying further money to the benchmarks was seen as an attempt to appease liberal House Democrats who want to end U.S. involvement in the war. But with top Democratic senators digging in their heels, the short-term plan seems likely to be joined by a separate Senate measure with funding for the remainder of the fiscal year, leaving yet another compromise to be worked out by a conference committee.
Manley said Senate Democrats have not settled on an approach. Reid late last week emphasized that he had not given up on including some kind of troop withdrawal time line in the new version, despite Bush's vehement opposition to the initial version.
Reid, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten, who began negotiations on a new bill last week, are expected to meet again later this week.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Democrats are pleased by the "conciliatory tone" coming from Bush and members of his team in the early stages of talks about the next measure.