Democrats fail on war vote, decide to target spending

WASHINGTON — Nearly a year after anti-war voters put them in power, congressional Democrats remain unable to pass legislation ordering troops home from Iraq.

Frustrated by Republican roadblocks, Democrats plan to sit on President Bush's $196 billion request for war spending until next year, pushing the Pentagon toward an accounting nightmare and deepening their conflict with the White House on the war.

"We're going to continue to do the right thing for the American people by having limited accountability for the president and not a blank check," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Senate Republicans on Friday blocked a $50 billion bill by Democrats that would have paid for several months of combat but also would have ordered troop withdrawals from Iraq to begin within 30 days.

The measure, narrowly passed this week by the House, also would have set a goal of ending combat in December 2008.

The 53-45 vote was seven votes short of the 60 the bill needed to advance. It came minutes after the Senate rejected a Republican proposal to pay for the Iraq war with no strings attached.

The Republican alternative would have paid $70 billion toward the war without restrictions. That measure failed by a vote of 45-53, 15 short of the 60 needed to advance.

Now, Democratic leaders say they won't send President Bush a war-spending bill this year. They calculate the military has enough money to run through mid-February.

Responding to the blockage, Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Friday signed a memo ordering the Army to begin planning for a series of expected cuts, including the layoffs of up to 100,000 civilian employees and another 100,000 civilian contractors, starting as early as January, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said.

He decried Congress' refusal thus far to provide the money needed to continue fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, accusing lawmakers of "holding hostage the well-being of our men and women in uniform, and our national security."

At the White House on Friday, deputy press secretary Tony Fratto said the spending gap is unjustified.

"We'd rather see the Department of Defense, the military planners and our troops focusing on military maneuvers rather than accounting maneuvers as they carry out their mission in the field," Fratto said.

Since taking the reins of Congress in January, Democrats have struggled to pass significant anti-war legislation. Measures that passed along party lines in the House repeatedly sank in the Senate, where Democrats hold a much narrower majority and 60 votes are routinely needed to overcome procedural hurdles.

On Friday, only four Republicans joined Democrats in voting for the Iraq measure: Sens. Gordon Smith of Oregon, Olympia Snowe of Maine, Susan Collins of Maine and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.

Sen. Chris Dodd was the lone Democrat opposing the measure because he said it did not go far enough to end the war. Other Democrats, including Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, said they too opposed the bill as too soft but that they supported advancing debate.

Also in the Senate on Friday, a drive to revamp the nation's costly farm subsidies died, leaving in place a system widely criticized for being out of step with the modern agriculture economy for favoring crops with minimal nutritional value and for funneling large federal payouts to wealthy investors.

The Senate's failure to end debate and move to a vote dashed the hopes of a wide coalition of groups that had worked to make sure this farm bill would improve child nutrition, increase investments in food-stamp programs and trim government subsidies to large corporate farms.

The farm bill also would have significantly invested in fruits, nuts and vegetable crops for the first time. It would have added more money for alternative energy sources, organic farming and conservation programs.

It also would have launched a program to improve school-lunch nutrition in all 50 states.

The 55-42 vote, short of the 60 votes needed, scuttled a bill that had also drawn severe criticism for falling far short of changes Democrats had promised when they took over Congress.

Some lawmakers had hoped to make even deeper changes to the bill with an amendment that would have cut billions in subsidies to a few major crops, such as corn and wheat, and steered the funds to a free crop-insurance program that covered all farmers.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, chairman of the agriculture committee, pledged to try to bring the bill back to the Senate floor after lawmakers return from their two-week Thanksgiving recess.

Material from the Los Angeles Times is included in this report.