Senate Joins House in Setting Timeline for Troop Withdrawal
AMENDMENT VOTE
The New London Day
Renée Dudley
Boston University Washington News Service
March 28, 2007
WASHINGTON, March 28 – Voting Tuesday to keep a timeline for withdrawal of troops from Iraq, the Senate joined the House in opposing President Bush’s stay-the-course plan, as debate about funding and a timeline continued Wednesday in the Senate.
The Senate narrowly rejected the Republican amendment to strike the timeline language from an emergency spending bill, 48-50. A final Senate vote on the bill is expected Thursday.
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), voting with the Republicans, supported the amendment that would eliminate the timeline for troop withdrawals from Iraq while Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) voted against the amendment.
Dodd said that although he would have preferred an earlier start date for troop withdrawal, he remains in strong support of keeping the bill’s March 31, 2008, target date for ending combat operations. The bill would provide $122 billion most of it for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The decision of both houses of Congress to support a timeline for withdrawal for the first time since the war began could have symbolic implications, even though Bush has already said he plans to veto the bill. The House passed its emergency spending plan, which includes similar troop withdrawal measures, last week.
“This vote sends a clear message to President Bush and others who believe that a protracted, embattled stay in Iraq is preferable to a clear course of action,” Dodd said.
“Even if the President vetoes this bill…Congress has taken a critical step in taking the U.S. policy in a new direction,” he said, adding that Congress will lead future efforts to reverse the Bush administration’s Iraq policy.
Lieberman, speaking to the Senate just before Tuesday’s vote, said the withdrawal provision “is contrary to our traditions; it is contrary to our values; and it is contrary to our interests. And yet that is precisely what this Congress will be calling for if we order our troops to withdraw.”
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