By any reasonable measure, Sen. Jim Webb’s (D-Va.) amendment seems like a no-brainer. As he explained yesterday, “Traditionally, when American military units are sent overseas, they are allowed twice as much time at home as they spent deployed. Today, that ratio has gone below one-to-one. So, after four-and-a-half years of an occupation in Iraq, our military people are getting burned out.”
Webb’s amendment is simple: the Bush administration would be required to provide active-duty troops at least equal time at home as the length of their previous tour. Serve a year in Iraq, for example, get a year at home. The measure enjoys bipartisan support, and has been endorsed by the Military Officers Association of America, which represents 368,000 officers.
But it still needs 60 votes to overcome a Republican filibuster. The initial argument from war supporters was that the Webb measure was, as John McCain put it, “blatantly unconstitutional.” McCain said, “Where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that the Congress decides how long people will spend on tours of duty and how long they will spend back in the United States?”
Webb dispatched that talking point fairly easily this morning, noting that Article I, Sec. 8 of the Constitution empowers Congress to “make rules for the government and regulation of the land and Naval forces.”
About an hour ago, Senate Republicans came up with a new idea: they’ll endorse the principle of Webb’s amendment, but they’ll make it non-binding.
Speaking on the Senate floor this morning, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), an ardent opponent of a pro-troop measure to relieve the stress on the overstretched armed forces, announced he will propose a toothless, watered-down substitute to the Webb amendment.
McCain said he and Sen. John Warner (R-VA) have teamed up to put together a “sense of the Senate” amendment to express “very clearly that we all want all our troops home and we understand the stress and strain that’s been inflicted on the men and women in the military and the guard and reserves.”
Got that? Republicans will grudgingly agree that troops deserve longer breaks, but they won’t do anything to make sure they get longer breaks.
Greg Sargent summarized this nicely.
McCain, who’s overseeing today’s activities as the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, announced on the floor that Warner would be introducing a “sense of Congress” amendment on troop readiness. A “sense of Congress” amendment is nonbinding — it’s not a law, it’s an expression of Congress’ opinion.
Thus, this allows Warner to express his opinion that the Webb measure — giving troops rest time equal to their time in combat — is merely a good idea, without putting it into law.
And just to add insult to injury, Warner cooked this measure up to kill Webb’s amendment, without telling Webb about it. They’re both from Virginia, Warner even voted for the Webb amendment earlier this year, and now Warner doesn’t even have the class to give his colleague a heads-up.
Apparently, this legislate-through-suggestion approach was crafted yesterday.
At a closed-door luncheon meeting Tuesday, Senate Republicans discussed drafting an alternative, non-binding “Sense of the Senate” resolution stating that the Senate recognizes that the burden is very heavy on troops but supporting the troop rotations set by the Pentagon, senators said. Republicans hope floating that proposal would prevent defections by allowing their conference to go on record recognizing the challenges facing troops in Iraq.
Naturally, Webb is arguing that if lawmakers want to support the troops, a resolution expressing the chamber’s opinion won’t cut it. They have the power to act, not opine.
“I have just learned from Sen. McCain’s comments that Sen. Warner will be offering a side-by-side amendment that goes to the sense of the Congress rather than the will of the Congress. And I would like to state emphatically at the outset that this is a situation that calls for the will of the Congress.”
Stay tuned.