By LIBBY QUAID, Associated Press Writer
Sunday May 6, 2007
WASHINGTON - The House Republican leader said Sunday that GOP
support could waver if President Bush's Iraq war policy does
not succeed by the fall.
House Minority Leader John Boehner (news, bio, voting record),
R-Ohio, said Bush's troop increase deserves a chance and should
be funded even if benchmarks for success are not met. Last
week, Bush vetoed a $124 billion bill to pay for Iraq and Afghanistan
operations in part because it required troops to begin returning
home by Oct. 1.
A senior House Democrat said it would be "ridiculous" not
to condition war money on progress in Iraq. Bush and his supporters
say a fixed date is unworkable.
"We don't even have all of the 30,000 additional troops
in Iraq yet, so we're supporting the president. We want this
plan to have a chance of succeeding," Boehner said.
"Over the course of the next three to four months, we'll
have some idea how well the plan's working. Early signs are
indicating there is clearly some success on a number of fronts," he
said.
But, he added, "By the time we get to September or October,
members are going to want to know how well this is working,
and if it isn't, what's Plan B."
Thus far, Republicans have stood behind the president's increasingly
unpopular war policies, including the troop increase and an
open-ended war commitment.
Yet Boehner's comments were an acknowledgment of the concern
expressed by some lawmakers in private that their support could
further damage the party, which lost control of Congress in
the November elections.
The senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations committee,
Sen. Richard Lugar (news, bio, voting record) of Indiana, said
Boehner is correct.
"General Petraeus will be back. He'll make a report," Lugar
said of Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. "Some
things will go well. Some things will not go so well, but we'll
still have an obligation."
The new Democratic leadership is pushing to begin pulling
troops out of Iraq.
"It would be ridiculous to think that we're going to
just drop this fight," said Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel
(news, bio, voting record) of New York, chairman of the tax-writing
House Ways and Means Committee. "This is not our fight.
This is the American people's fight. They asked us to send
a message to the president."
"We've got to shake that White House until the people
of the United States are heard," Rangel said. "Sure,
we've got to have some restrictions on the money."
Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, a Democratic presidential candidate,
said congressional Republicans increasingly seem uneasy about
Bush's policies.
"So we may disagree politically here, but remember where
the American public is on this issue: They want a change. They
think we're getting less secure, far more vulnerable today,
than ever before, and they want a change in this policy," he
said.
Sen. Charles Schumer (news, bio, voting record), D-N.Y., predicted, "the
taste for continuing with the present course among Republicans
in the Senate and the House is going to fade very quickly,
and we will get the change in mission."
In a statement, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel
(news, bio, voting record) of Illinois said Boehner's concern "has
less to do with the troops coming home, and has everything
to do with his fear that House Republicans will be sent home."
Top White House aides are negotiating with Democratic leaders
on a new war spending bill.
Another Democratic presidential candidate, former Sen. John
Edwards of North Carolina, argued against negotiating and said
lawmakers should keep sending Bush the same Iraq spending bill.
"I think that America has asked the Democratic leadership
in the Congress to stand firm, and that's exactly what I'm
saying they should do," he said.
Edwards started airing a television commercial last week urging
Congress to stand up to Bush and keep sending back the vetoed
bill, which sparked a quarrel with Dodd.
"With all due respect, we could have used John's vote
here in the Senate on these issues here," Dodd said.
Dodd and Boehner appeared on "Fox News Sunday," while
Edwards was on "This Week" on ABC. Rangel spoke on "Face
the Nation" on CBS while Lugar and Schumer were on "Late
Edition" on CNN.
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