Senate Rebuffs First Challenges to Bush's $87 Billion Request
By Jonathan Weisman and Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, October 15, 2003; Page A04
The Senate easily defeated a Democratic effort yesterday to shift $5 billion in proposed Iraqi reconstruction aid to popular domestic programs, then crushed the first legislative attempt to convert President Bush's $20.3 billion Iraq rebuilding request into a loan.
The votes mark the opening skirmish in what promises to be a hard fight in Congress this week over Bush's $87 billion spending request for Iraq and Afghanistan. Many Democrats want to pare the president's plan, and lawmakers in both parties have proposed to convert at least some of the money into loans. The House and Senate hope to pass the spending request by Friday and send a final measure to the president before the Oct. 23-24 Iraq donors conference in Madrid.
To keep the package on track, the president summoned senators from both parties to the White House yesterday afternoon, but an administration official conceded they "still need a little more pushing and hauling," especially on the loan issue.
One senator -- John Edwards (D-N.C.), a presidential candidate -- announced yesterday that he will oppose the $87 billion request. He called the administration's Iraq policy a failure and said Bush will change course only if someone "stands up to him and says 'no.' "
Still, momentum appears to be in the president's favor. The first test came when Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) proposed to delay spending $5 billion of the reconstruction request for a year, and instead spend it on U.S. school construction, veterans' health care, community health clinics and transportation projects.
"Why should these projects receive emergency consideration for Iraq, and our infrastructure projects have to wait?" Stabenow asked. "We need to act now, at home. We need jobs now."
But Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said nearly $12 billion is already being spent on school construction. "I'll tell you where there are no schools without our assistance," he said. "That's Iraq."
Stabenow's amendment failed, 59 to 35, with seven Democrats joining the GOP majority. Senators then voted 57 to 39 to kill an amendment by Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) that would have deleted all $20.3 billion in Iraqi reconstruction aid and created a new Iraq Reconstruction Finance Authority that would seek loans, rather than grants, with Iraqi oil serving as collateral.
Several other loan amendments, some sponsored by Republicans, will come to a vote this week.
The $87 billion request appears likely to open another fault line among the Democrats seeking their party's presidential nomination. Although all nine have criticized Bush's current Iraq strategy, Edwards is the first of those who last year supported the congressional resolution authorizing Bush to go to war to break openly with the administration on its funding request.
Edwards said he still believes his vote for that resolution was correct, that it is essential to continue to support U.S. forces in Iraq and that the United States has a responsibility to help rebuild that country. "But this president's policy is a failed policy" that endangers U.S. troops and undermines the prospects for turning over authority to run the country to the Iraqis, he said yesterday.
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), one of the administration's most stalwart supporters on Iraq, plans to vote for the $87 billion request, according to a spokesman. Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), a key White House ally on the war resolution vote last year, has not decided on the spending request, according to his spokesman.
Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who supported the president a year ago but criticized him for rushing to war, said yesterday he will oppose the spending measure unless it is amended to reduce Bush's tax cuts by $87 billion and brings other nations in to share the burden of reconstruction.
That puts Kerry in about the same position as former Vermont governor Howard Dean, whose opposition to the Iraq war helped catapult him to the top tier of the Democratic presidential race. Last week in a New York Times interview, Dean declined to take a position on the spending request. But the next day, in a debate in Arizona, he said he would oppose the $87 billion request unless Bush accepted an equivalent reduction in his tax cuts.
Retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, who said he probably would have voted for the war resolution and later said he would have opposed it, has joined other Democrats in criticizing the administration's current course in Iraq. But spokeswoman Kym Spell said Clark had no position on the $87 billion request. "He's not in Congress," she said. "He's running for president."
Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) opposes the $87 billion and wants to bring home the troops. Former ambassador Carol Moseley Braun would not say whether she would vote for the request as submitted by the White House. Al Sharpton has criticized the request. |
