WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Bush expressed optimism Wednesday about a possible deal with Democrats on the war funding bill, but neither side seemed closer to compromise.
“I’m confident, with goodwill on both sides, that we can move beyond political statements,” Bush said, a day after his veto of a $124 billion war spending bill that included a deadline for U.S. troops to pull out of Iraq.
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reacted coolly to a GOP proposal to break the deadlock.
Republicans have expressed a willingness to put benchmarks for progress on Iraq’s government, as long as there is no U.S. withdrawal time frame, Pelosi said. “Benchmarks without teeth are, what, a conversation?” Pelosi asked.
Bush has invited congressional leaders to a White House meeting Wednesday afternoon.
Shortly before the meeting, the House failed to override Bush’s veto. The 222-203 vote was far short of the two-thirds majority it would take to override a presidential veto.
Earlier Wednesday, give and take on the House floor showed how far apart the two sides are.
“Now into the fifth year of a failed policy, this administration should get a clue,” Pelosi said. “It’s not working.”
Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-California, replied, “You’ve made your point. You had your dog-and-pony show. You’ve posed for political holy pictures on TV. Now what is your plan to support the troops?”
Republicans insist time is running out before lack of funding begins to affect the troops. (Full story)
One House GOP leader said he hopes both sides can agree on a negotiation team that would begin around-the-clock talks.
Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, the House minority whip, said he hopes participants at the White House meeting can agree on a team “to get this settled.”
Blunt accused Democrats of wasting time on a bill that would never become law.
Anticipating Bush’s veto, Democrats began crafting a new bill, which strips the troop withdrawal language and adds a series of benchmarks that would measure the progress of the Iraqi government.
The big question facing lawmakers and the White House is whether to require consequences if the benchmarks aren’t met. Democrats and some Republicans support consequences, while the White House fiercely opposes them.
Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, said Wednesday that Bush vetoed “the will of the American people” expressed in November’s elections.
“We’ve got to begin to reduce our troop presence because there’s no military solution in Iraq,” Levin said.
In a televised address Tuesday explaining the long-threatened veto, Bush said the measure “substitutes the opinions of politicians for the judgment of our military leaders.”
In response, Democratic congressional leaders said Bush must explain how he will bring the four-year-old war to a close.
“A veto means denying our troops the resources and the strategy that they need. After more than four years of a failed policy, it’s time for Iraq to take responsibility for its own future,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada told CNN’s “American Morning.”
Senate GOP leader open to benchmarks
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, said Tuesday that he would be open to including “properly crafted” benchmarks for Iraq’s government to meet in a new bill.
“I do think there are some kinds of benchmarks that might well achieve bipartisan support and might actually even conceivably be helpful to the effort in Iraq,” McConnell said. “And that’s what we’re going to be looking for.”
But the White House has equated any kind of binding benchmarks for political progress with the kind of deadlines it has long opposed.
Benchmarks under discussion would include passing laws related to the sharing of oil revenue and national reconciliation and reducing sectarian violence — measures that Bush has publicly pressed the Iraqis to meet.
A senior Republican lawmaker, working behind the scenes with senators from both parties, has suggested a possible way to bridge the gap — calling for troops to be withdrawn if the benchmarks aren’t met but allowing the president to waive that requirement if he chooses.
Bush: Funds urgently needed
Bush said the money in his spending bill is urgently needed to fund U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of the money would go to Iraq, where the combat operations now cost about $2 billion a week.
But the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has concluded that the Pentagon could wage war through July without additional funding.
“Whatever our differences, surely we can agree that our troops are worthy of this funding and that we have a responsibility to get it to them without further delay,” Bush said. (Watch military brass prepare for a possible money shortage )
The veto is only the second of Bush’s presidency. The first, in July 2006, killed a bill that would have expanded federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research.
The latest came on the fourth anniversary of Bush’s 2003 speech from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, when he declared that “major combat” in Iraq was over.
More than 3,200 Americans have been killed in Iraq since then, and the war has become widely unpopular at home. (Watch how things have changed since that speech )
Sixty-six percent of Americans in a recent CNN poll said they opposed the conflict, and 60 percent said they backed Congress in its standoff with the White House.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino accused congressional Democrats of “a trumped-up political stunt” by sending the war funding bill to Bush’s desk on the speech’s anniversary.
“After more than four years of a failed policy, it’s time for Iraq to take responsibility for its own future,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid”
To do that is like a police officer picking up a little kid in a crime-infested ghetto, telling him it will be alright, driving down the street two blocks, and then forcing the kid out of the car and back out on the street, and the police officer driving off thinking he just done something good.
Benchmarks without teeth are a ‘conversation’, Nance? How about a set withdrawal date being an encouragement to the bad guys who don’t want the coalition to succeed? You are an idiot!
And Mr. Biden, how’s that ‘shoving this down Bush’s throat’ thing working out?
Based on the President's official veto signing statement, it is the Democrats who acted against the "will of the people" from the 2004 election - in which a president was chosen, and it was not Congress - by sending this POS pork laden surrender bill to President Bush in the first place.
So the vote to over-ride got 4 more votes than the original surrender bill. I’d like to see the list and where those four extra votes came from.
Wow! They actuall reported on something a REPUBLICAN said!
That's his key phrase, if you parse it... there is no goodwill on the part of the RATs. And W knows it. Misunderestimated yet again.
These jerks KNEW he wouldn’t sign it so they spent all this time, energy, money, etc. to push through a bill they knew wouldn’t pass muster. Now how dumb is that???
Why do libs never say this about their own known-to-be-failed policies?
Ok, I'll answer that: Because, in their lexicon, a "failed" policy is the one instituted by "somebody else". Their policies always succeed by definition.