Here's the latest on the back-room negotiations over the Iraq short-term funding bill House Dems are to vote on today: It looks as if for the first time, the House is also going to hold a straight up-or-down vote on whether to end the war.
Last night, Nancy Pelosi called a bunch of liberal members into a meeting and told them that she didn't have the votes to pass the bill, according to a source familiar with the meeting.
So she told the liberal members that in hopes of getting enough votes for passage, she would also schedule a vote on a bill crafted by Dem Rep. James McGovern, the source said.
McGovern's bill would mandate that within three months of passage, military withdrawal would have to commence, to be completed within six months of then. After that, the bill mandates, no Congressional money can be used for military operations -- though there's an allowance for certain types of special ops activities. McGovern's bill was introduced in the rules committee last night.
Here's why this is important. While the chances of passage of the measure are virtually nonexistent, it's the first time that House liberals have been able to leverage a straight yes-or-know vote on withdrawal. "It's huge," said one legislative aide. "It changes the dynamic. It means there will be more and more votes on straight measures like this."
Apparently there's some effort underway this morning to block this vote from coming to the floor, so it's still possible that it might not happen, but at any rate, it's a key development.
Meanwhile, the vote on the short-term spending measure is also set for today.
More to come...
Update: The McGovern bill mandating withdrawal is here. Again, this will not pass today. But it's significant both because it's the first straight, yes-or-no vote on withdrawal in the House, which means there will be more votes like these to come.
And it's also significant because it's the first time the liberal members have been able to use their clout to force a "vote on something they believe in," as one aide put it to me.
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