The Daily Background

The upshot of today’s vote in the Senate is that there is almost certain to be a non-binding requirement for combat troop withdrawal from Iraq by March 31st, 2008. Democrats were able to strike down 50-48 a Republican motion to kill the withdrawal deadline language.

Now once the bill itself passes, it’ll be somehow reconciled with the House bill that passed last week (which had a binding withdrawal measure attached to it, that will probably be substituted out for a non-binding one to make it match up with the Senate version), and it’ll go to the White House.

Republicans have signalled they will not hold up the process because they want the President to veto it ASAP so it can get back to Congress and then presumably Dems will have to take out the withdrawal language (maybe replace it with something else?) so it’ll pass the President’s desk. Democrats will probably be eager to get the bill to the White House as soon as possible too, because it’ll be the President’s second veto of all time and it’ll make big news and be a big PR coup for Dems, who will be doing what more than 60% of the country wants.

It might also have the added plus of making the President look petty by insisting on vetoing a non-binding measure which he can ignore anyways on his own “emergency” war funding request.

Filed under: Iraq Related, Z-TDB Blog