Iraq puts "cloud over everything" in Congress

WASHINGTON — After largely avoiding the subject since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, lawmakers are confronting the issue of President Bush's handling of the war. The start hasn't been pretty.

Political stunts by both parties have created an air of acrimony that is infecting the parties' entire agendas, and the war debate itself is obscuring every other issue in the capital.

The bitterness reached a new high — or a low — on Friday, when House Republicans forced a late-night vote on a resolution for immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces, in an attempt to put Democrats on the spot.

The resolution failed, 403-3, but only after members nearly came to blows when a GOP newcomer suggested Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania — a Democrat, decorated Marine Corps veteran of the wars in Korea and Vietnam, and one of the House's most-respected military hawks — was a coward.

The GOP resolution grew out of a proposal made Thursday by Murtha that sought to force the president to withdraw the nearly 160,000 troops in Iraq "at the earliest practicable date."

"Iraq is now a cloud over everything," said Stuart Rothenberg, a nonpartisan political analyst specializing in Congress. "It's the 800-pound gorilla in the room."

"I feel like every morning I wake up, get a concrete block and have to walk around with it all day," said first-term Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., who came to the Senate with an agenda to overhaul Social Security and the tax code. "We can't even address the issues."

After simmering on Congress's back burner for months, the Iraq debate has eclipsed every other issue, slowing progress on some matters while stopping progress on others.

The GOP-led House and Senate are struggling to pass major tax legislation, an extension of the USA Patriot Act and a sweeping budget-cutting bill. Bush's top 2005 domestic agenda — revamping Social Security — has sunk from sight, and more recently his bipartisan panel on tax reform barely made a ripple when it issued recommendations.

GOP leaders view items such as the Patriot Act and the budget as too vital to fail in the end, but every endeavor is now made more difficult by the fracturing over Iraq — and just as the 2006 congressional elections begin to loom. Republicans have lost their anchor of the past five years — Bush's popularity — while Democrats still struggle to find their voice on the war. Neither side can dally for long, said Peter Hart, a Democratic pollster.

"Iraq is now the dominant issue that is affecting voters, and it's affecting Bush's ratings," Hart said. "The public has reached a firm, fixed position on Iraq, and it's not going to change: This is not going to come to a successful conclusion, so how do we figure out how to get out of Iraq?"

GOP showing signs of wear

Until recently, only Democrats seemed to struggle to find their voice on Iraq, as Republicans were virtually united in backing Bush's policies. But as climbing U.S. military deaths there coincided with troubling revelations about prewar intelligence and Bush's plunging approval ratings, Republican cohesion began to fray.

Political developments in Iraq, such as the adoption of a new constitution, cannot overcome the impression left by the daily reports of suicide bombers and the recent milestone of the 2,000th U.S. troops lost, pollsters and political analysts say.

Democrats attack, Republicans change course

Public opinion has, in turn, emboldened Democrats to sharpen their attacks, and it has freed some Republicans — especially Northeastern moderates — to chart a new political course that separates them from the White House but wreaks havoc on the GOP's legislative agenda.

"The central new development is the decomposition of the president's support in Congress," said Ross Baker, a Rutgers University congressional expert. "I think there is a very acute realization on the part of Republicans that they no longer can hitch their careers to his popularity. That, combined with the new aggressiveness by the Democrats, means you're seeing basically a Bush agenda that is largely being derailed."

Politicians tried to calm the waters roiled by Friday's House maneuvering. GOP leaders had seized upon the impassioned call Thursday by Murtha for the withdrawal of U.S. forces in Iraq, hoping to put Democrats on the spot by rushing a resolution to the floor calling on the administration to bring the troops home immediately.

"Today's debate in the House of Representatives shows the need for bipartisanship on the war in Iraq , instead of more political posturing," Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., said in a statement Friday night hailing the bipartisan Senate vote earlier in the week that called on the administration to share more information on the war's progress and to make 2006 a year of significant transition away from U.S. military action.

Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., said Saturday that the result of the debate was positive, an unambiguous, bipartisan show of resolve for the war effort. Only three Democrats, Jose Serrano of New York, Cynthia McKinney of Georgia and Robert Wexler of Florida voted for the withdrawal resolution. But Pence, too, noted the acrimony of the discourse. "We cannot do democracy without a heavy dose of civility," he said.

Acrimony's broad impact

That acrimony and the all-encompassing nature of the war debate are having a broad impact. Bush's recent globetrotting, in Latin America and Asia, has produced more stories on dissent over Iraq than on free trade, economic cooperation and China's move toward democracy.

When Bush's bipartisan panel on tax reform issued its recent recommendations to simplify the tax code, proposals to eliminate deductions for home-mortgage interest and state and local taxes might have been expected to create an uproar. Instead, the panel's report barely made a ripple.

The president's plan to trim promised Social Security benefits and add private investment accounts disappeared without a trace. After Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said any reform plan is dead until 2009, the comments were hardly noted.

Other high-profile legislative priorities have been slowed by a lack of attention from the leadership. Congressional aides released details last week from a compromise reached over the extension of the Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism law passed just weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But the deal was not acted on quickly, and in ensuing days, provisions of the compromise attracted enough negative attention that a planned vote on the measure was delayed until at least next month.

House Republicans took weeks to garner enough votes to pass a five-year, $50 billion budget-cutting measure full of high-priority policy changes Bush has requested for welfare, Medicaid, agriculture supports and other entitlement programs. The Iraq-induced plunge in Bush's popularity emboldened moderates to oppose the most conservative parts of the bill.

On Friday, after the measure passed by two votes, Republican leaders hoped to highlight the victory at a "get out of town" rally. But they swamped their message by hastily putting the Iraq pullout resolution to a vote. That move also precluded an expected vote on a five-year, $56 billion measure to extend some of Bush's most-prized, first-term tax cuts.

Rothenberg, the political analyst, said such confusion does not bode well for the political fortunes of the beleaguered GOP.

"The public doesn't like mess," he said. "When they realize things are messy, they get frustrated and they arrive at the general conclusion that you blame the people you figure are in charge."