House Officially Rebukes Bush on Troop Surge

Friday, February 16, 2007  -  reddit

The United States House of Representatives has voted 246-182 to pass the Iraq War Resolution that condemns President Bush's plan to temporarily increase troop levels in Iraq by as many as 21,000 active serviceman, which could include another 20,000 in support personnel.

It was a forgone conclusion that the Iraq resolution would pass in the House of Representatives, given the superior number of Democrats and limited Republican support from across the aisle. The time for debate in the House had just come to an end just a little after 3PM EST.

Suffice to say this probably won't garner a significant amount of attention since it has been in the news for pretty much the past two weeks solid.

Harry Reid is going to call the Senate into session this Saturday in an attempt to get a vote on their version of the resolution, and even though there are enough Republicans willing to vote in favor of the resolution at this time for it to pass with a veto-proof majority, none of them are willing to let debate begin at this time.

Democratic attempts to initiate debate on the resolution have thus far failed, meaning no debate has even taken place in the Senate, while there has been over thirty hours of debate in the House with close to three-fourths of the members having a chance to speak.

Todays resolution is non-binding, meaning it has no force of law and is essentially an expression of the opinion of the House. As many as ten to twenty Republicans are expected to vote in favor of the House resolution.

The House has passed a number of smaller bills during morning business over the past four days, including -- and I am not joking -- whether or not to name a post office somewhere in Texas. There was nearly unanimous bi-partisan agreement that the House should name that post office, and it was quickly dispensed with.

With the inevitable passage of the House resolution, Democrats in the Senate, including John Murtha, are threatening to introduce bills that would repeal the previous Congressional authorization for the Iraq war, and would attach a number of strings to the $100 billion funding bill the President has requested for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Though these bills would be certain to raise objections from President Bush, they could be attached to must-pass spending measures such as funding for the Iraq war itself, or overall omnibus spending bills that fund the federal government, making them extremely difficult to stop.

One of this strings would be the defunding of permanent bases in Iraq, and a requirement for a timetable of troop withdrawal.

The final vote was 244 Democrats and 182 Republicans in favor of the Resolution.

tags: Iraq, Bush, Iraq War, Congress