Panel agrees to send bills on Iraq, troops to House floor

The House Armed Services Committee approved two Iraq-related bills Friday, including one that would require the Bush administration to report to Congress on the status of its plans to reduce the size of U.S. military forces in Iraq.

The bill (H.R. 3087), sponsored by House Armed Services Air and Land Forces Subcommittee Chairman Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, succeeded on a 55-2 roll call vote. The report required by the bill would be due 60 days after enactment of the legislation.

The other measure (H.R. 3159) approved by the panel would mandate down time for active-duty and reserve troops between deployments to Iraq. The bill passed on a 32-25 roll call vote that split largely along party lines.

Sponsored by House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee Chairwoman Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., the bill requires that active-duty troops receive as much time between deployments as they served in Iraq, while reservists would receive three times as much time between deployments.

During the markup, Abercrombie offered a substitute to his original language, which had required the Bush administration to submit a "comprehensive strategy for the redeployment of the armed forces in Iraq" within 60 days of enactment of the bill.

The change in language -- coupled with Defense Secretary Robert Gates' recent acknowledgement that he is working on various Iraq contingency plans, including a troop pullout -- helped bring all but two of the committee's Republican members on board in support of the legislation. Indeed, several of the panel's senior Republicans, including House Armed Services ranking member Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., praised the language.

Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., offered and then withdrew an amendment to the Abercrombie bill that would have made clear that the bill does not constitute support for a decision to withdraw U.S. forces deployed to Iraq. Rep. Joseph Sestak, D-Pa., also withdrew his amendment that would have reconstituted the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan independent panel that offered recommendations last year on a strategy for Iraq.

Meanwhile, the Tauscher bill drew stiff opposition from Republicans on the panel, who said they feared the legislation would unnecessarily tie the administration's hands for future deployments to Iraq. The bill is similar to an amendment to the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill offered by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., earlier this month; the Webb bill fell four votes short of the 60 needed under Senate rules to invoke cloture, forcing its withdrawal from the floor.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton, D-Mo., successfully offered a substitute amendment to the bill, which stated that the measure would only apply to U.S. military personnel deployed in the Iraq conflict. Several Republicans had expressed concerns that legislation setting rest periods for troops essentially served as a back-door way to limit deployments to the increasingly unpopular war.

Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., called the language a "three-P bill," which he said amounted to "political pandering to public opinion." Gingrey and other Republicans also questioned the constitutionality of the amendment, which they said limited the president's authority as commander in chief.

Tauscher shot back, arguing that the bill was necessary to give heavily deployed troops the rest they need between deployments. "We are the House of Representatives of the American people and if we do not speak for [the troops], who will?" she said.

Rep. Thelma Drake, R-Va., introduced a non-binding substitute amendment that expressed the sense of Congress that active-duty troops should receive twice as much down time as they spent deployed, while reservists should have at least five years between deployments. That language failed 27-32, mostly along party lines.

Tauscher criticized Drake's sense of Congress language, saying it simply "maintains the status quo."

In another effort to water down the language, Rep. Jim Marshall, D-Ga., offered an amendment that would have given the president greater leeway to waive the deployment restrictions. His proposal failed, 28-30. The bill requires the president certify to Congress that a waiver is needed to respond to a national security threat.