WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans on Tuesday helped advance a Democratic-pushed bill to cut off money for the war in Iraq, saying the additional debating time would allow them to hail progress there.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said the discussion will allow the GOP to cite the “extraordinary progress that’s been made in Iraq over the last six months, not only on the military side, but also with civilian reconciliation beginning to finally take hold in the country.”
The Senate voted 70-24 to advance the bill past a procedural hurdle and begin debating it in earnest. A final vote was expected later this week or next week.
The White House said the president would veto such a measure.
Democrats said they welcomed the debate, although they accused Republicans of stalling on plans to debate other issues, namely the housing foreclosure crisis.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said that “a civil war rages” in Iraq and shouldn’t be the responsibility of U.S. taxpayers.
“Americans need to start taking care of Americans,” he said. “We cannot spend a half-billion dollars every day in Iraq.”
Senate Republicans had been widely expected to block the measure, as they had done repeatedly in the past. But after emerging from a closed-door meeting earlier Tuesday, McConnell said the GOP members were now eager to discuss the war.
The vote came as the Army’s top general said he wants to reduce combat tours for soldiers in Iraq from 15 months to 12 months this summer.
Gen. George Casey, the Army chief of staff, told a Senate panel he would not embrace going back to the longer tours even if President Bush decided to suspend troop reductions for the second half of the year. The Army is under serious strain from years of war-fighting, he testified, and must reduce the length of combat tours as soon as possible.
Casey said he anticipates the service can cut combat tours this summer as long as the president reduces the number of active-duty Army brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan to 15 units by July, as planned.
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