A New War Funding Bill?

The Democrats have settled on a strategy for their follow-up to the war funding bill the Prez vetoed last week. They're going to offer a bill that will provide some money, but then they'll have to vote again in a couple of months for the rest. As I think I've written before (though I couldn't find an actual instance when I just now looked for a link), this is a clever strategy. Let's keep bringing this subject up over and over so that we'll all pay more attention to the situation. Remind everybody whose war this is and where everybody stands on it. Bush is already threatening to veto before the bill has even come to the House floor. He wants unlimited funding with no strings attached. He's been used to getting whatever he wants from Congress, so it's about time that he realizes that he has to play well with others. He long ago expressed his true desire for his role in government ("A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it"), and the Republican Congress let him get far too close to it, but now its his chance to see how he reacts to an oppositional Congress.

Outside of the wrangling over the new bill, there seems to be some scrambling going on among Congressional Republicans. House Minority Leader John Boehner told FOXNews on Sunday: "By the time we get to September, October, members are going to want to know how well [the surge] is working, and if it isn't, what's Plan B." Trent Lott quickly backed that up for the Senate, as well. (Or did he? Oddly, I was looking for a link for Lott's statement, and in Google News, only two came up, but both of them actually linked to totally different stories; only the link I used, found on AMERICAblog, still connected to Lott.) Perhaps in response to the groundswell of Republican opposition, the Pentagon announced that the surge could well last into 2008. Take that, September Republicans! But some Congressional Republicans, possibly concerned about their chances for reelection if troop levels are still surging during an election year, took their complaints to the White House in what one of them described as the "most unvarnished conversation they've ever had with the president." It was led by Mark Kirk, who represents some of Chicago's northern suburbs, a couple of districts north of here, although The New York Times reports that Boehner was there, as well.

In the short run, I don't think any of this will mean more Republican support for the limited war funding bill. When the Repubs say "September," I'm not sure they mean it, but even if they do, I highly doubt that they'll publicly break with the Prez much earlier than that.