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Thursday, March 29, 2007
Senate's 51-47 Supplemental Vote a Challenge to Bush
The Senate passed a $122 billion supplemental spending bill this afternoon by 51-47; it was a party-line vote, with all Democrats in favor and all GOP Senators opposed, except for Chuck Hagel (R-NE), and Gordon Smith (R-OR), who supported the measure.
The House passed a similar but slight larger supplemental package last week. The two bills provide about $100 billion in spending for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the remainder on domestic needs -- the largest supplemental appropriations bills ever passed by their respective chambers. Last week and then again this week, President Bush issued successive veto threats against the House and Senate bills, citing "the excessive and extraneous non-emergency spending," presumably referring only to the domestic spending provisions.
Using specific target dates and stating those dates as a "deadline" (in the House's version) and a "goal" (in the Senate's), both houses of Congress have now called -- over the loud objections of the commander-in-chief expressed in his veto threats -- for complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from a war that has lasted longer than World War II and has been this nation's most expensive ever. The Senate bill further mandates that troop withdrawal commence within four months of enactment.
The Senate has appointed conferees but the House hasn't, so the conference won't begin until mid-April. The war funding, which the President says the troops must have by the end of April, is poised in limbo, with no sign that either side is prepared to reverse positions that are now a matter of record.
Posted by Dana Chasin
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