"A Sensible Proposal for Iraq"

mcjoan:

The House leadership has been stretched and twisted and turned and played on the current House supplemental appropriation "compromise" for Iraq. The resulting bill, as BarbinMD describes, reflects that tortured process. The result, a bill that few can really be satisfied with, except maybe Bush.

Among the dissatisfied are the Blue Dogs that Stoller identified who are opposing the bill because it sets a date for withdrawal (even though it doesn't have any real way of enforcing that date).

But after forcing the Progressive Caucus to come to heel in appeasing the Blue Dogs, the leadership has decided to give them free rein. Bowers is reporting from an article in The Hill that leadership isn't going to whip the bill.

House Democratic leaders will not whip the Iraq supplemental spending bill, on grounds they don't want to apply political pressure on a matter of war and peace.

"It's a conscience vote," House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said after yesterday's Democratic Caucus meeting. But he added his office had begun to "survey" members now that more are looking at the 170-page bill.

"Have we got the 218 votes to pass it? I don't know," Clyburn said.

Says Chris:

Bullshit. The House leadership quite decidedly whipped the progressive caucus on the Iraq bill less than a week ago.... Why are they letting them off the leash now? Probably because, as Matt reported earlier today, seventeen Democrats--who are mainly Blue Dogs--said they could not vote for a fixed date on withdrawal.

In other words, progressives get whipped into voting for a compromise, and Blue Dogs get to "vote their conscience." Progressives are expected to compromise their beliefs, but then the leadership won't even stand up and fight for a compromise they wrangled out of the progressives.

Yup. And the Progressives played along and lost just about everything, except an end date Bush could and would ignore.

So what's to be done with such a mess? I think the Progressives should vote their conscience. Vote against it. Join with the hard core Blue Dogs and Republicans and kill it. Scrap it. Start over from scratch. Write a new bill that provides up to, say, 90 days of the funding request but nothing else.

Take the next 90 days to craft legislation that makes sense. This bill doesn't have to be rushed and forced into a bad compromise. Give us more time to put pressure on the Blue Dogs to support the original Murtha proposal, the proposal that the majority of Americans think is an absolute no brainer.

Or better yet, bring up the Murtha troop readiness proposals as a separate vote. Force the Blue Dogs to go on record on BarbinMD's question:

Does the Congressman support requiring that all troops are properly rested, trained and equipped before being sent to Iraq?

That'd be an excellent place to start over.