Nancy Pelosi on Iraq Funding Bill

This is a report from MyDD on a blog conference call given by Nancy Pelosi to a group of about 20 bloggers about the Democratic view of the battle over war funding legislation.

Speaker Pelosi: "We have to end this war."
by kid oakland, Tue Apr 24, 2007 at 08:55:29 PM EST

I received an email in my inbox earlier today inviting me to participate in a last-minute conference call with Speaker Pelosi and some fellow bloggers on the subject of Iraq.

I wanted to share the thrust of that conference call with the readers here and spell out the best I can what the Speaker of the House had to say.

Speaker Pelosi was very clear and echoed a point she made on the Huffington Post last November 17th following the election that made her Speaker of the House: "We have to end this war."

Let's me elaborate on that...

Speaker Pelosi was no-nonsense, direct and, from my point of view, did not pander to the twenty or so of us on the conference call. It was pretty clear that what Speaker Pelosi said to us, she would say to anyone.

Jumping onto the call, Speaker Pelosi wasted no time in addressing the conference report on the Iraq supplemental. Before I elaborate on what she had to say, let me address, briefly, the legislative process the Speaker was talking about so that we're all on the same page:

The Iraq Supplemental

From time to time, Congress votes on a budgetary supplemental to cover funding of expenditures not included in the main budget; the President has consistently, and deceptively, chosen to put funding for the war in Iraq into that supplemental, and, hence, the current Congressional supplemental bill has been called "the Iraq supplemental."

Paul Kane at the Washington Post, has an elegant and straightforward summary description of the current state of affairs in regards to the Iraq supplemental here:

The battle over the supplemental spending bill for the Iraq war can be boiled down into a five-act play, heading toward a climactic showdown at some point next month. The first two acts have already been completed, with the House and Senate passing versions of the supplemental and setting differing withdrawal dates from Iraq next year.

The next act is playing out now, as the two chambers are hashing out the differences between their bills in order to send a compromise version to the White House for a likely veto -- which would be the fourth act. And the final act will be in May as the two sides figure out how to fund this ongoing war in Iraq while placing some restrictions on it.

Speaker Pelosi, then, was calling to address the state of the Conference Report for the Iraq supplemental...or act three in Kane's description. If you'd like to read more about the Iraq
Supplemental:

Paul Kane has a summary of the break down of the vote in the House: House votes on the supplemental.

This is the WaPo report on the vote in the Senate.

Here is some discussion by Chris Bowers and the community at MyDD

You can find discussion by Markos and the community at dkos here and here
and, lastly, the Iraq supplemental was covered on TalkLeft here and here.

Speaker Pelosi's Comments

In a nutshell, here's what Speaker Pelosi had to say. (This is my best attempt to report the gist of the Speaker's statements...but using, for the most part, my own words.)

Speaker Pelosi emphasized that it is critical to force the President to either "sign and honor" the bill sent to him by Congress or "veto and differentiate" himself from the voters who sent the 110th Congress to Washington. That choice must be laid before the President. He will have to explain his veto if he chooses to go down that path. That is the first step, according to Pelosi, we must take in ending this war.

Further, Speaker Pelosi emphasized that the bill that Congress presents to the President will clearly call for a "paced redeployment" of our troops from Iraq with benchmarks applied to the Iraqi government. If the Iraqis meet those benchmarks, the United States will begin redeployment in October and the withdrawal will take place over 180 days and meet the March 2008 timeframe suggested by the bi-partisan Iraq Study Group. If the the Iraqis fail to meet those benchmarks, redeployment will begin in July of this year. Those will be the goals expressed in the Conference Report.

It is critical, Speaker Pelosi reiterated, that the President face a bill that lays out a framework for "paced, responsible redeployment" of our troops in Iraq, not the "no strings attached" funding bill that President Bush is seeking. There are two main consequences here.
First, a veto of such a bill, even if it uses the "goal" language and, hence, eschews the hard and fast deadline in the House version of the bill, would make clear to the American public that President Bush is "blinded" by this war in Iraq and stuck on a strategy out of sync with the American voters and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. Pelosi suggested that if the President vetoes a bill with "goal" language, he will be taking an extremely isolated political position. Per the Speaker, the public at large is much more receptive to "goal" language at this point than "deadlines," hence, using goal language, which seems the way this is going, makes it extremely politically isolating for the President to veto this bill even if that language makes it to some minds a much weaker bill.

Second, and Speaker Pelosi was most emphatic on this point, this bill will also define under law that the President does not have the authority by any Act of Congress to continue his chosen course of action unfettered in Iraq. The President has assumed, since 9/11, a very aggressive stance regarding his ability to do whatever he wants as Commander in Chief; in some ways Bush acts as if Iraq attacked us...and Bush, under the War Powers Act, is free to do whatever he wants.

Speaker Pelosi emphasized that Congress must reassert itself and say, and I'm paraphrasing here, when Congress defines the limits of the authorization in Iraq, that is the law. The bill that Congress sends to the President, veto or not, goal language or not, will be an important first step in the process of putting Congressional limits on the President's authority in Iraq and, hence, ending this war.

The impression conveyed by the Speaker was this: more important than any particular wording of the bill that emerges out of conference, are the legal and political ramifications that will attain when the 110th Congress defines limits on what the President is authorized to do under the law in Iraq. A bill that defines funds for a "phased redeployment" in Iraq with timelines and benchmarks and goals has a clear legal meaning that the President cannot avoid. Even, or especially, if the President vetoes this bill, something will have changed in the political process and under our law.

The Speaker was quite clear. The important thing is for Congress to reassert itself. When asked what she would do if the President chose to sign this or a future bill with a signing statement that rejected the clear meaning of the bill that Congress had passed, Speaker Pelosi said, "We can take the President to court."

When asked about the waiver on "Troop Readiness Standards" that makes them a "guideline" and not a "hard and fast" rule, Speaker Pelosi said this was a case in point. Ike Skelton put the guideline language in the bill to avoid a charge that the bill will micromanage the President. At the same time, Speaker Pelosi reiterated, under that language the President will have to come to Congress and justify any instance of accelerated deployment of forces to Iraq. When the President sends troops to Iraq who don't meet the readiness guidelines laid down by Congress, he has to come to Congress and explain why. That will be the law.

In sum, the Speaker holds that sending this Conference Report to the President is the beginning of a political and legal process that will both constrain the power of this President and bring an end to this war.

Politically, Speaker Pelosi sees this process as an ongoing step by step movement that will involve the American people, Democrats and members of the Republican Party in Congress. We are going down a path, according to Speaker Pelosi, of a series of votes that will make "staying the course" in Iraq "too hot to handle" for the President. Putting a bill that calls for a "paced redeployment" before the President will unify the Democratic Congress and bring, more and more, as time wears on, Republicans onto the side of voting to end the war.

The Speaker was clear. The American public, as a whole, opposes the President's policies on Iraq. We must hang together through this process and see it through. Speaker Pelosi spoke in no uncertain terms: "We have to end this war."

Other topics:
Speaker Pelosi is proud of the other componets of the budget supplemental: among them Katrina aid, a Children's health initiative, and a Veteran's health supplemental.
The Speaker is adamantly opposed to impeachment and will not bring it up within Congress. Simply put, she states that there is too much else that is too important to do. (My reading of her statement, however, was that she understands that citizens are free to advocate for impeachment and oppose this President as they wish. Impeachment is however something that she strongly disagrees with bringing up in Congress.)

Vis a vis the discussions and debate within the Democratic Party and the Democratic caucus the speaker said that "the perfect can't be allowed to be the enemy of the good here." She sees building support for the Iraq Supplemental on the right and the left as an incremental process. Pelosi has a clear message to members who are considering voting against the Conference Report Bill: we will need every vote we can get in the event of a veto, if you are with us in opposing the veto of the President you should join with us now in the passage of this bill.
The Speaker conveyed an aggressive legislative calender for 2007 that will take on: energy, the economy, education/technological innovation, defense, care for children, the environment, and governmental transparency and fiscal responsibilty. Her goal is to have the Democratic Congress use this legislation to rebrand the word "Democratic" so that it is a powerful force for victory in the 2008 elections.

Conclusion:
I have tried to refrain from adding my own spin to the Speaker's words. If there's anything I take away from this "blog conference call" from my own point of view, it's this:
A) Speaker Pelosi is very serious about a responsible and speedy withdrawal of our forces from Iraq and bringing an end to the war.
B) Now is truly the time for those who oppose this war in every Congressional District in the U.S. to get active, to get informed and to communicate your views to your Representatives and Senators, whomever they might be.

The overwhelming sense one gets from Speaker Pelosi is that she is on a mission that she takes very seriously. It is clear that she sees this process as involving the entire nation in an evolving national debate.

She did a "blog conference call" to reach out to us in the netroots. I didn't get the sense that she had any objection to the idea that not everyone would agree with her. I guess, in light of that, and this historical moment, I would suggest that now is maybe a time to shake off our cynicism, roll up our sleeves, and dig into this process with strength and hope. It's a long road from 2003 till now, but it seems to me that what Speaker Pelosi is talking about might be called, if we work at it, the beginning of the long road home from Iraq.