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When congressional reporters swarmed around Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., outside the Senate chamber on October 16 for his regular Tuesday briefing, their questions focused on the issues dominating the week's news cycle: children's health care, confirmation hearings for the attorney general nominee, and government surveillance powers. But just before Reid took questions, he pulled out a large index card with the latest Democratic talking points about the Iraq war.

"General Casey, chief of staff of the Army, said Iraq has crippled our military to the point where we cannot respond to crises elsewhere in the world," Reid read from the card. "Our military is stretched so very, very thin. Our focus is on the wrong part of the world, the wrong part of the Middle East, and America is no safer than we were six years ago."

Although none of the reporters asked Reid about the war, Americans continue to tell pollsters that it's the No. 1 issue that lawmakers should be addressing, and it's a major reason for Congress's rock-bottom approval ratings. Anti-war advocates have kept up the pressure on Democrats to reduce the U.S. military presence in Iraq, but Reid still lacks the votes to set withdrawal timelines, let alone cut off war funding. In the most recent test on the Senate floor, a proposal by Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., on October 3 to end war funding by June drew only 28 supporters.

So, Democrats are in a jam. They can't pass major legislation forcing President Bush's hand on Iraq, but they can't ignore the war issue either. The next major battle will be over the White House's request for nearly $190 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan -- the largest funding request for the war yet.

If that debate were held now, though, it could well play out the way the funding battle did in the spring, with Democrats passing legislation paying for the war but setting a withdrawal timeline, Bush vetoing the bill, Republicans upholding the veto, and then Democrats acquiescing on providing the money.

Anti-war liberals may press for -- and get -- another funding fight this year, but many Democrats want to punt that debate into next year, when the political climate may have changed. In the meantime, they'll argue their case by emphasizing three things: the strain the war has placed on the military, as Reid mentioned in his talking points; the Bush administration's mismanagement of the war; and the costs of the war in relation to domestic priorities, such as children's health care. They will continue to push minor legislation to highlight their war oversight efforts, and hammer both Bush and Republican lawmakers for sticking with him.

People "want to see change," Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said. "I think they're starting to see, especially with the children's health insurance issue, the intransigence of the other side. People are starting to see who's blocking the efforts to make a change in Iraq. We'll just keep going back" to the issue, she said.

In the House this month, Democrats have passed three Iraq-related bills aimed at accentuating their oversight of what they see as the administration's inept war management. One bill would make contractors in Iraq, such as those in the Blackwater scandal, subject to U.S. law. The second asks the Defense Department to provide Congress with plans for drawing down U.S. forces in Iraq. The third criticizes the State Department for withholding documents from Congress related to corruption in Iraq.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said on October 16 that additional Iraq measures will be hitting the floor in coming weeks. He mentioned two bills in particular, one sponsored by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton, D-Mo., setting a timeline for troop reductions, and the other sponsored by Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., seeking to give troops more time at home between deployments.

"We think the readiness of our armed forces has been substantially undermined under this administration," Hoyer said in response to a question from National Journal, echoing Reid's talking points that day. "We have no, presently, rated-for-full-deployment units in the United States if there should be a crisis somewhere else in the world."

In the Senate, a proposal similar to the one the House passed instructing the Defense Department to provide troop withdrawal plans has been gaining traction. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., who has been trying all year to come up with bipartisan legislation on Iraq, is the lead sponsor. He has attracted co-sponsors from both parties, ranging from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., to Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C.

Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, who has criticized Bush's handling of the war but has not voted for Democratic-crafted withdrawal timelines, is also a sponsor. "I want to get something done," Voinovich said. "The piece of legislation that passed the House didn't go as far as I'd like it to go, but I've joined in with Senator Salazar and Senator Clinton and other senators to support fundamentally what the House proposal does, and I think we're going to get a vote on it."

Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., told NJ that he also supports the planning proposal, which would be coupled with hearings to review the Pentagon's plans. "I don't know that it would do much," he said, "but it certainly starts the Department of Defense thinking in terms closer to my own position."

In the run-up to the next Iraq funding fight, Durbin and other Democratic lawmakers, along with liberal interest groups, regularly contrast Bush's call for nearly $190 billion more for the war against their $35 billion children's insurance bill and the $23 billion that they want to spend on domestic programs in fiscal 2008 above the president's request.

"The public wants an end to the war, and they want health care for kids," said Moira Mack, a spokeswoman for Americans Against Escalation in Iraq. "That's the messaging we're pushing right now. It really makes clear the upside-down priorities of the Bush administration."

Durbin said it's possible that the Senate will take up the war funding request this year, but House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., has called for temporary "bridge" funding to keep troops supplied through the beginning of next year. Obey has threatened to delay crafting a war funding measure until Bush commits to a plan to draw down troops over the course of 2008.

"The Pentagon doesn't really need this money probably until early spring, but certainly not before February," said Scott Lilly, a former Obey chief of staff who is now a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress. "I don't think they'll get it before then."

A key question facing appropriators in both chambers is whether to provide war funding for the entire fiscal year, or for just a few months at a time. As part of the war spending bill that Bush signed in May, the House acquiesced to Senate demands that the money last through September 30, the end of fiscal 2007, given that there were only a few months remaining anyway. But the new fiscal year has just started.

"I don't know what approach we're going to use with the House in terms of the length of the supplemental" war funding bill, Durbin said. When the stopgap continuing resolution that is funding all of the federal government, including the war, runs out in November, "we'll be faced with the next funding issue, and whether or not that raises a debate, I don't know. The House has made clear they don't want to go the whole fiscal year, and so we have to find out what period of time we'd be working toward."

Anti-war liberals in the House want to take a hard line against Bush in the coming months. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, has gone so far as to call on Democrats to refuse to provide any more war funding and instead tell the president to use what money he has to bring troops home. A broader coalition of 89 members, led by Reps. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., and Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., has sent Bush a letter saying they will support additional appropriations only if the money is used solely to withdraw troops.

Republicans, for their part, are prepared to criticize any attempt to delay funding for the troops, a strategy that in May helped to force Democrats to provide the money the administration wanted. "We need to get them the money that the troops need as soon as possible," Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., said.

GOP lawmakers are also emboldened by reports that the situation in Iraq is improving, including a front page Washington Post story on October 15 suggesting that Al Qaeda is largely defeated in Iraq. Republicans point to the decline in violence as a sign that the president's Iraq war strategy is working and will be sustained through the end of his administration.

"There's an Iraq war in January 2009," said Thomas Donnelly, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. "I'm almost willing to bet the mortgage on it."

COMMENTS

• This is a message for the Democrats elected back in 2006. You were elected to try to force a change in the course of America's involvement in Iraq, yet, when President Shrub threatens to veto a bill that would attempt to accomplish this, the Democrats cave in and do not send anything to President Foliage. The Democrats should be introducing bills that would lead to a change, and then send them forward to force President Foliage to veto them, and be on the record that he is against anything positive for a change to the condition in Iraq. Failing to force him to go on the record continues to play into the hands of President Forest, and makes the Democrats seem incompetent and inept. The only solice I can find in the current situation is that with each passing day, we come one day closer to January 20, 2009, and the day that we can send President Twig back to his home in the original state of confusion-Texas! jd Posted October 23, 2007 6:26 AM
• "People are starting to see who's blocking the efforts to make a change in Iraq." Based on this article I can tell it's Democrats who are blocking change in Iraq. The article mentions that only 28 Democrats are calling for ending war funding. This must mean that the majority of Democrats are supporting the continuation of this war. The Republicans couldn't block anti-war efforts unless they had a lot of Democratic allies. Alfred Molison Posted October 22, 2007 2:22 PM
• It's really very simple. Bush wants the war to continue cause if you dig deep enough he, his family and his buddies are making big money somewhere as a result of the war. Bush and the GOP keep forcing the Democrats to continue funding by using the threat concerning failure will endanger the troops. All the Democrats have to do is provide a written deadline (say 9 months) that they will continue to fund the war. They then provide Bush with a ultimatum saying "You have been given fair warning, we will fund the war until this date but no longer...you better have our troops out by this date or their blood and welfare will be on your hands". SATOS Posted October 22, 2007 8:03 AM