The Daily Background

Something extraordinary might happen this week. Apparently Mitch McConnel (R-KY), the Senate Minority Leader, will not, repeat not threaten a filibuster on the Senate’s upcoming Iraq vote. This means that instead of 60 votes to pass the bill, it will take only the usual 50 votes.

Basically the legislation is an emergency funding package, requested by the President for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Democrats have attached a provision which requires combat troops to be out by the end of March, 2008 (similar to the same thing that passed the House last week which called for troops out by September of 2008).

The legislation will then go into conference committee with the House version, and once the two are close enough, it’ll go on to the White House. Incredibly, the legislation may actually pass through Congress.

Naturally the President will immediately veto it because he wants the power to keep US troops in Iraq for as long as he wants to. At that point the bill will go back to Congress, and Democrats will be forced to take out the deadline provisions (sorry, Judd Gregg couldn’t give you line item veto powers, Mr President).

Anyways, if it does pass through Congress (and there’s only the Senate left to go), it’d be incredible– even if it is vetoed a few days afterwards. The majority of the public wants the troops out within a year, and the majority of the public wants Congress to act on this.

Can you imagine the publicity it’d get if Democrats are actually able to pull this off? Not to mention the type of (negative) publicity the White House will get the President vetoes the bill that provides emergency funding for the troops? Not to mention vetoes the bill that the majority of Americans support? It’d be an absurdly large publicity coup, probably an order of multitude bigger than whatever House Dems got when they passed their 6 for ‘06 legislation.

Filed under: Z-TDB Blog