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  • The Week on the Hill

Richard E. Cohen

A few decades ago, old-style Rep. Frank Annunzio, D-Ill., reportedly walked through the Speaker's Lobby outside the House chamber as the place buzzed over the usual intrigue. In a derisive dismissal, he supposedly blurted, according to congressional folklore, "All that matters are the yeas and nays. Everything else is just bull." But Annunzio would have had trouble deciphering the House's May 24 vote on war funding.

After President Bush vetoed the year's first Iraq supplemental spending bill because of its Democratic-crafted timelines for U.S. troop withdrawals -- and party leaders lacked the votes to override him -- they acquiesced last week and put together another version that merely sets benchmarks for the Iraqi government and requires the president to give Congress a progress report. The House approved the bill, 280-142, but Democrats voted against it, 86-140.

No doubt it's been many years since the House passed an appropriations bill, especially one dealing with the nation's most contentious issue, with votes primarily from the minority party. In another era, such an outcome might have been viewed as a "no-confidence" vote in the majority party. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was unfazed, however. Speaking to the House a few minutes before the vote, she called the bill "an inkblot."

"We are all familiar with the Rorschach test," she said. "Some will see one thing; some will see others.... But these benchmarks by no means meet the obligation that we have to our men and women in uniform if they can be as easily waived.... This is like a fig leaf. This is a token.... When I look at this inkblot, I see something that does not have adequate guidelines and timetables."

Meeting with reporters the next day, Pelosi praised "the unity of our leadership," even though the next three top House Democratic leaders had voted for the war spending that she and a majority of their caucus had opposed. In the Senate, 38 of the 49 Democrats and independents who were present supported the 80-14 vote to send the package to Bush.

House Republican leaders claimed they didn't need a Harvard seminar to figure out who won the three-month spending battle. "It's a big deal for the speaker of the House to bring a bill to the floor that she is not for," said Minority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo. "This isn't what they had in mind." A GOP leadership aide called the outcome "another Democratic failure to keep their promises."

Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif., recalled the famous 1981 showdown when, as a freshman, he joined a coalition of Republicans and dissident Democrats that rolled House Democratic leaders to pass President Reagan's spending cuts. Dreier noted that although Democrats this year have been trumpeting their election mandate, "now they lose, even though they claim that their message is winning."

Potshots like that miss the point, some Democrats respond. Public opinion polls show continued strong opposition to the Iraq war. And, as Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told the May 25 press conference, "There are 232 Democrats in the House of Representatives that believe that our policies in Iraq are failing ... [and that] we need to move in a new direction."

Democrats are hopeful that congressional Republicans' resolve to stand with Bush on Iraq will unravel by September, and they plan additional floor votes to intensify the pressure. In her May 24 speech, Pelosi vowed, "This debate will go on," including a vote on repealing the congressional authorization for the use of force in Iraq. She urged members "to join in listening to the American people in the coming days, weeks, and months, and bring this war to an end."

Still, those words were hardly reassuring to liberal Democrats who grumbled that party leaders threw in their cards too quickly. Dismayed MoveOn.org activists and other anti-war groups are reminding Democrats that their pledge to end the war was a major reason for their party's November electoral victory. "Democrats don't have a strategy for victory," a veteran House Democratic aide lamented. "It's a risk if the public begins to see us as part of the problem."

Pelosi saw an upside in that the appropriations package that Bush signed included $11 billion in domestic spending -- such as hurricane and agricultural disaster relief, and funds for veterans' and children's health care -- along with the first minimum-wage hike since 1996. "We are sending six priorities to the president to be signed into law," she exulted.

But the extent of public gratitude remains to be seen: A mid-May Gallup Poll showed that public approval of Congress has sunk to 29 percent, down from 37 percent in February. The average approval rating for the GOP-controlled Congress last year was 25 percent.