White House looks a gift horse in the mouth, gives it back

May 18, 2007

By late last night, it appeared that a compromise between congressional Dems and the White House on war funding was very close. Predictably, it looked like Dems were going to give up far too much in exchange for very little, and then hope to find more success the next time around.

But as it turns out, the compromise fell through today. White House negotiators looked a gift horse in the mouth, and decided to give it back.

During the session, held this morning in the Capitol, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) offered to strip billions in domestic spending from the legislation, leaving only the $95 billion that President Bush had sought to continue military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through September.

The Democratic leaders also proposed reviving the troop withdrawal schedule that had been included in the spending bill’s first version, vetoed by Bush earlier this month. To make the timeline more palatable to the White House, Democrats offered to give the president a waiver option.

Not good enough, said the White House.

White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten, who rejected the deal, said any timetable on the war would undermine the nation’s efforts in Iraq.

“Whether waivable or not, timelines send exactly the wrong signal to our adversaries, to our allies and, most importantly, to the troops in the field,” said Bolten.

So, a bill that funds the war with every penny Bush asked for, with a timeline the president can waive, and without a penny of extra spending is too much for the president to bear.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

The WaPo emphasized that Bolten had a counter-offer for Dems.

White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten turned down the deal and countered with one of his own. Bolten said Bush was prepared to accept benchmarks for the Iraqi government, with the results tied to reconstruction aid, along with new administration reporting requirements on the war’s progress.

On Wednesday, 52 senators, including seven Democrats, voted to support the benchmark package, offered by Sen. John Warner (R-Va.). But Pelosi and Reid said the terms weren’t tough enough.

What the Post neglected to mention is that Warner’s plan would have allowed Bush to override the proposal by ordering the funds to be spent regardless of how the Maliki government performed. In other words, it was largely toothless — the benchmarks were suggestions.

By all indications, Reid and Pelosi were prepared to concede far too much. Indeed, the Speaker realized that if the White House accepted the “compromise” plan, she’d have to pass it with votes from House Republicans, because much of her own caucus would balk at so many concessions.

And the Bush gang still turned it down. Amazing.

So, what happens now?

Reid said Democrats would now work among themselves in the hope of producing a new version of the spending bill by Monday. “We’re now negotiating with each other to make sure that we can come up with something that can pass both the House and the Senate,” said Reid. Whether Bush would sign it, he added, is “up to him.”

Pelosi added, “It is clear that the difference between the president and Democrats is accountability.” Ultimately, she added, “Our troops will be funded.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Nope. Until the Dems stand up to this administration, it will do whatever it wants, like a petulant little child. I bet the Dems fold, and look like the b*tch-slapped little sissies that people think they are. If they fold they are no more useful than the do nothing GOP Congress we had for the past 5 years. Why vote Dem, then.

  • Our troops are funded as soon as the Congress offers up a bill to do that. And they have. Any lack of funding will be Bush’s fault. Stick to it, Congress.

  • The Dems will cave on funding and the Republicans in Congress will look like they were the ones who came up with the funding solution. So bottom line the Dems anger voters who support getting out of Iraq, look weak and ineffectual and provide Republicans all the cover they ever needed on Iraq. All around loss from the Dem POV.

  • God we need a new party. The American Progressive Party. When will these Dems get it. Only 33people out of 100 will open their big mouths in protest if you tell Bush to go screw himself. Fund troop withdrawal not the ‘splurge’. You could probably get away with only 1-200 19yr old Johnnies dead rather than 4-500 dead boys if you stop now. Forget all the political rhetoric about terrorists, troop support, civil war etc. etc. and picture the bodies being delivered to congress daily. You assume it won’t get worse while waiting for it to get better and the bodies would be a good daily reminder. Bush’s policy is failed and you know this. So stop giving him more money to keep it going. How much more proof do you need. Bush’s stubbornness is a refusal to compromise . If he can be this closed- minded about the funding then you know he has closed his mind to any info that doesn’t already agree with his failed policy. His bullheadedness has blinded his vision and is detrimental to our troops. Be bigger than him. Cut him off, it’s what the voters want.

  • The Democrats should be initiating a full-on PR assault on Bush, laying the blame on him for the lack of a compromise and for risking the funding. The message is that the Democrats are trying to get the troops taken care of AND some kind of progress on ending this war, and Bush will have none of it. (The Adult Congress vs. Spoiled Child President frame.)

    It’s not enough to say ‘accountability’ – that’s too cerebral a word. It’s time to get people seeing Bush as a whiny child who isn’t willing to play with others unless he gets his way completely.

    They’d be justified in resubmitting the same bill he vetoed, as far as I’m concerned.

  • Dale, I agree with you.

    Especially in light of the recent Comey testimony on Bush’s conduct in ordering his thugs to muscle a drug-addled and hospitalized Ashcroft, and the shite he is going to take on the immigration “roll-over” from his “base.”

  • You can’t win at chess by pounding the board with your fists, which is what bullyboy is doing. The administration is out of its league on this one.

  • Congress is playing chess. Bush is playing poker. — Erik K, @5

    …and the public, especially those who’d voted for Dems, are being played for suckers.

    Greg Sargent, over on TPM Election Central, says that he’s heard (from a lib aide) that Dem leadership is likely to cave in in toto and give Bush his blank check afterall. Bleh.

  • It is certainly nice of Bush to give the Democrats one more chance to grow a backbone.

    Seriously, the most encouraging thing in the post, are Reid’s words, ““We’re now negotiating with each other . . . ” meaning that the Democrats are negotiating with the Democrats.

    The power of the Democratic Party was destroyed by the poisoned “bi-partisanship” invented by Reagan and worshiped by Broder and exploited by Lieberman. It was founded on the triangulating politics of resentment, which made “liberal” a dirty word and separated the working class from ideological progressives.

    Bipartisanship from FDR to LBJ, to Ford and Carter, was a way for both rational moderates in both Parties to come together in rational governance, excluding the reactionaries in both parties from power. But, now all the reactionaries are in the Republican Party, and we have seen the results from their sojurn in power.

    The Democrats have an opportunity to expand the Party, by welcoming rational conservative refugees from the Republican crack-up, and to use that expansion to form a political majority, which will exclude the reactionary authoritarians from power. But, that will require the Democrats to learn to negotiate among themselves, to fashion policy by creating compromises between conservative and progressive Democrats. This will take practice, before it becomes a reflexive pattern in our poiltics. Anything Mr. Bush does to help the Democrats establish this pattern in the exercise of power, before Bush is consigned to the dustbin of history, can be viewed optimistically.

    So, yes, let the Democrats fashion and pass a new funding bill. And, please, let Mr. Bush veto it.

    Politics is not just policy. It is also theatrics and patterns of political association. And, although it tries our patience to have this terrible war continue, if it strengthens and repairs the country’s damaged political institutions, then the process may yet redeem us.

  • if even the compromise bill isn’t good enough for bush, send him back the same one he vetoed before, then see if the compromise bill isn’t good enough…….

  • All around loss from the Dem POV. – MO Blue

    It’s an even worse all around loss for the troops.

  • # 5 and # 6 said it well. The Dems need to draw the line. And they should toss those words like “accountability” and “funding.” “Put up or shut up” is better. And “Pay the troops” beats “fund.” Who cares if funding means more than that.

    Bush and the Republicans have become about as vulnerable as they’re going to be until 2008. Their actions may be awkward, but I have a feeling the Dems are going to draw some blood with this one. Hanoi Bush is daring them. I don’t think many people who have been following this issue are going to back Bush.

    There IS another plan however. The “fox reverse,” the kind of thing that throws an opponent off balance with the completely unexpected. Give Bush everything he wants — and much, much more. Demand deployment of 10 more divisions. Authorize the president to restore the draft. Make Karl Rove the War Pope. Propose eliminating ALL tax deductions to put the nation on a “total war” footing. Use Bush’s own words against him. Mushroom clouds, fight ’em there, war on terror, bring ’em on, equivalent of WW II, peace, democracy, and the American Way. Stuff his war up his ass.

  • Call Bush’s bluff. Democrats should pass the their bill with waivers and tweak Bush by adding a little bit of pork for New Orleans and agriculture.

  • Erik K,
    Yes, Reid and Pelosi are playing chess and Bush is bluffing with an empty hand.

    Bush has handed them an enormous opportunity.
    It is now public that Bush has rejected even benchmarks without a timeline.
    Reid and Pelosi can go back to the hard-core anti-war caucus and cajole them into voting for a bill with no timeline, but benchmarks with teeth and make it a referendum against Bush. They’ll get those votes and this can pass.

    If Bush vetoes this version of the bill, with the timelines taken out, it is virtually impossible for anyone to characterize it as anything but a stubborn, hardline position against a genuinely softened position from the Democrats.

    Likewise, supporting the President’s veto on a bill with just benchmarks will put a lot of endangered Republicans in very difficult positions and, in my opinion, is likely to finally break the back of the Republican’s unified front.

    Of all the potential scenarios, this is truly the best that could have been hoped for. Once the door closed behind them, I’m willing to bet that Reid and Pelosi had a hard time suppressing their grins.

  • Let’s look at the week-to-date for Kid George:

    He’s lost Wolfowitz. (how many US Presidents have had their ass waxed by the Europeans like George did when Wolfowitz had to resign?)

    Comey did a slash-&-burn of Gonzo; it’s pretty much a cut-&-dried case of subverting the Constitution, followed by a coverup of the same.

    Plame shoots Dick the Dog in the face, and the WH legal-beagles turn out to be empty hotdog buns.

    The Iraqis want a withdrawal timeline (I guess he didn’t know that Iraq was a tag-team partner to our Congress…).

    Petraeus the Proud signals that September might not be what it’s supposed to be.

    Britain bails on Blair.

    American healthcare ranks right up there with Botswana and Lesotho.

    Ten little uberschweinen stand on stage and make bin Laden say, “Hey—you’re calling ME a terrorist?”

    The militant wing of the GOP abandons Bush over immigration reform.

    You guys say he’s “toast?” He’s not toast—he’s a freaking marshmallow that just slipped off the pointy stick and fell into the middle of the campfire. No s’mores for Rover tonight!

    This guy isn’t just weak; his presidency is on life-support. He’s got a DNR order riveted to his forehead, for crying out loud. If Dems would rally to the cause, the Bush administration will simply implode—and take the neoconservative political construct with it into the abyss….

  • You know, I feel so stupid, because here’s my thinking. If no compromise is reached, then there’s no money for the war. If there’s no money for the war, don’t we bring the troops home?

    And if all that is true, why is it that the Democrats are trying to cut a deal with Bush? No bill – no war. If Bush wants a war, he needs a bill. Shouldn’t he be the one seeking a compromise?

  • Ronn Zealot has a point. The Dems should tell Gen. Petraeus to get those helicopters staged because Bush not only wants to deny the troops a cost of living wage, he’s willing not to pay them at all so he can say he won a pissing match. The troops need to realize George is holding them hostage for meaningless political victories. And that pretty much summarizes W’s entire Iraq policy.

  • Lot’s of great comments above, but much of it tacitly assumes something of a level playing field as the MSM reports on the maneuvering. It’s not level. The Dems have to play their hand against Bush knowing that the media will slant (“balance”) their stories by underplaying the enormous concessions the Dems were making and overplaying how “reasonable” Bush is trying to be. I read all the stories yesterday and that is what I saw.

    The media environment in which this drama plays out is politically important, and it is not on the side.

  • ROTTON SPOILED CHILDREN DON’T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING BUT A “STRAP” ON THEIR BUTTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IT’S BEEN THIS WAY THROUGHOUT HISTORY.

    Bend over George!!!!

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