The House, not the Senate, Will end the War

By andgarden, Section Diaries
Posted on Thu Aug 30, 2007 at 06:01:34 PM EST
Tags: Iraq, Senate, House, Dick Durbin, Defunding (all tags)

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Crossposted from Daily Kos

In his latest front page entry, Markos quotes Dick Durbin saying that he will likely be unwilling to vote against the new supplemental funding the George Bush has requested.

Even opponents of the war, as Durbin calls himself, find themselves likely to vote for the extra money, he said. "When it comes to the budget, I face a dilemma that some of my colleagues do," he said.
He voted against the war "but felt that I should always provide the resources for the troops in the field," Durbin said. "But it's now reached a point where we have got to change the way we appropriate this money."
Though he said he is likely to approve the increased request -- it would accompany a pending request for an additional $147 billion in war funding -- Durbin said he would work to attach conditions to it that would require troops to begin coming home in the spring.

In other words, Dubin plans to do nothing.

Recent history tells us that we should not be surprised. Nor, indeed, should we look for the Senate to end the war.

As I and others have argued repeatedly over the last several months, our ability to end the war rests in our ability to convince the Congress to defund it. Given the partisan makeup of the two bodies, and the rules under which we operate, it seems obvious that we stand a much better chance of achieving the goal I propose in the House.

Just look at the last supplemental vote. In the Senate, Only 14 voted against the bill. Two of those Senators who voted no were Republicans, and they did not vote no because they wanted to end the war in Iraq. In other words, not even a quarter of the majority in that body considered taking a serious step to end the war.

In the House, we see a different picture. 142 members voted no. Most were Democrats. More than a majority of the majority voted against the funding. In other words, if we can convince Nancy Pelosi to operate the House under the "Hastert Rule," which held that only bills supported by the majority of the majority would be given assistance by House leadership, then we can be much closer to defunding. To be sure, it is possible that Republicans will get a discharge resolution and pass the spending anyway, but if they do, the