WASHINGTON – Democratic presidential candidates urged Congress on Tuesday not to yield to President Bush’s veto of an Iraq funding bill that included a timetable for beginning troop withdrawals, but the party’s two leading contenders were more tentative than their rivals in offering support for aggressive steps to bring the war to an end.
On the fourth anniversary of his appearance on the USS Abraham Lincoln to announce the end of “major combat operations,” President Bush vetoed a $124 billion measure that would have funded overseas military operations but required him to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq in October – or as early as July if certain conditions were not met.
Bush carried through on his veto threat Tuesday just after the legislation arrived at the White House, calling the timetable a “prescription for chaos and confusion” that would undercut generals.
“Setting a deadline for withdrawal would demoralize the Iraqi people, would encourage killers across the broader Middle East and send a signal that America will not keep its commitments,” he said Tuesday night. “Setting a deadline for withdrawal is setting a date for failure.”
Democratic congressional leaders cast the veto as willful defiance of the American people. “The president wants a blank check,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said just minutes after Bush’s statement. “The Congress is not going to give it to him.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said that “if the president thinks that by vetoing this bill he will stop us from trying to change the direction of this war, he is mistaken.”
Bush plans to host congressional leaders from both parties at the White House this afternoon. Democrats have indicated they see June 1 as a drop-dead date for finishing the bill.
Four candidates – Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden, Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards – called on Democrats to consider more drastic steps aimed at ending the war.
New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, however, argued that Congress should stay focused on the fight over the supplemental funding bill before considering more far-reaching steps favored by their rivals.
Clinton issued a statement through her Senate office urging Bush to begin to negotiate with congressional Democrats “on a funding bill that will enable us to begin redeploying our troops.”
Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said the Illinois senator prefers to continue to gather support in Congress to override the president’s veto, an unlikely venture.
Biden and Edwards urged Democrats to send the supplemental funding bill back to the president and force him to veto it again.
Richardson, who favors a quick end to the war, argued that rather than focusing on the supplemental funding bill, he said, Democrats should now try to win support for a resolution that would take away Bush’s authority to continue the war.
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