It seems like if the mini-resolution strategy is used, timelines would have to go out (to avoid the veto), and the reduced money would itself be a timeline- Bush would have to come back to the well every 3 months or so because he doesn't have enough money to go for longer.  The pork would stay in (since there is no timeline for that) and the funding for the occupation would be cut down.  

imo, withdrawal timeline is non-negotiable - but since it doesn't affect the 3 months covered by the appropriations; it serves only as a reminder of what congress is committed to doing and gives the POTUS plenty of time to plan for the withdrawal.

it also gives three more months for the POTUS to negotiate - perhaps on benchmarks? (yeah, i know the POTUS is unlikely to negotiate - but that should be a carrot to offer).

and the withdrawal timeline MUST remain the same (no moving it up by three months). the idea is to continue funding, but let the POTUS know that funding for the occupation won't continue indefinately and that he needs to be planning the safe withdrawal of our troops, and negotiating with stake holders in the region for that future event.

if the dems can hold together for this... that will be a tremendous success.  and i expect that more Rs will be voting with the Ds as time goes on.... this allows us to put pressure on our reps to stop supporting bush's war.

i still have lots of fears about this process... and failure now risks a big backlash... but i have more hope than i did last week. good luck, and thank you for your efforts, chris.

p.s. i'd like to see the requirement for privatizing iraqi oil be thrown out too... but that's probably wishful thinking.

CBC Institute announces Fox News debate for Sept. in Michigan.

Sen. Obama, your plans?

Make it weekly - that will really put a bur in the R's back side - make it that every week, everyone has to vote for it on Monday.  

Seriously, it be excruciatting for them

My favorite position right now is cutting back the pork, and just giving him a strict funding bill with a timeline. Force him to swallow the timeline first...work on the pork later.

I'd give him three months of funding for a timeline...then another three months for something else.... etc etc.

How about this.  Each "mini" blank check gets smaller and smaller.  For the next month you get everything you want.  The following month you get less, the following even less.  Here's the formulation for how much money.

There are X number of troops in Iraq.
You want 0 there in one year(Senate Deadline).
The administration wants Y number of dollars for the next year.
Take Y divided by 12 and you get the amount of money needed for 1 month at current levels.(we'll call that M for month)
Take M/X.  That's money required per troop.  We'll call that A
Now take X/12.  We'll call that B.  B represents the average number of troops to withdrawl per month to get down to 0.
Month 1 Bush gets A times X(his full amount)
Month 2 Bush gets A times (X - B) because B number of troops should be gone by then.
Month 3 Bush gets A times (X - B - B) because 2 B times troops should be out and etc...

That's the actual way it's done.  You can sell it in talking points by saying, "We have told the President ahead of time that the money will not be there, it is his responsiblity to withdraw the troops."

I read somewhere else, but really both of these ideas (not mutually exclusive)

1. keep sending him the same bill every week with the funding decreased by X dollars

2. Bring another resolution to vote saying Congress would like to give Bush unlimited unrestricted funds for a war that may last forever against any and all people or nations he as unitary executive deems an "evil-doer."  Of course it wouldn't pass but it would kill the Republican talking point about not restricted the "war-time" president.

Fund the war in 3-4 month increments.  Tinker a bit with the benchmarks--for example, the first 3-4 months bill includes the appropriate benchmarks for that timeframe and the next only, so he knows what he needs to be able to show when he comes back.

I think the idea of making him report to Congress on progress before he gets more money is the only way that they will have enforceable benchmarks.  The onus needs to be on him so that no copmpliance = no money.  Otherwise, he just does a signing statement and ignores all the restrictive language.

Alternatively, make a few changes (nothing major) and send the bill back.  Then move to the 3-4 month funding chunks if he won't negotiate.  That should be about June, when the money will really run short.

First off, I'm more than a little dismayed to learn that House Dems have been brainstorming strategy at this stage in the game.

Surely, they would have done detailed preparation for the Iraq supplemental in January while they were waiting for Bush to send over his request, and been updating strategy ever since?

Anticipating events and their opponents' responses many moves in advance - I don't play chess, but I'm aware that you can't win unless you do that!

They must have known when they started planning for the supplemental bill that its defunding, timetable or suchlike provisions would not get enacted: either the bill would be stymied in the Senate, or Bush would signing-statement away what he didn't like, or he'd simply veto.

Now, if this brainstorming is a smokescreen for the benefit of the GOP, from which a ready-prepared plan will be sprung, that's fine and dandy.

If not, I'm worried.

On the proposal for three-monthly (or more regular) Iraq apps bills - why would people suppose that Bush will sign the first of them?

I'm not sure whether there are any precedents for such a funding regime - my guess is that there isn't.

The very fact that it's being suggested as a substitute for a timetable feeds Bush's reply that - it's a timetable in disguise. (And a pretty feeble disguise too!)

The general rule (the GOP will say) is annual apps bills; drip-feeding the executive branch would be a dangerous precedent, and an unconstitutional curb by the Congress on the libert of that branch to manage the Federal government.

I don't think that's too difficult a line to spin, in fact.

The three-monthly apps bill scheme is a patent shenanigan - I love 'em usually, but in this case, the tricksy-ness of it detracts from the position that the Dems have already built up of being the straight(er) shooters on Iraq.

I also don't like the idea of keeping Iraq funding as an open sore for the effect it's likely to have on Dem party discipline.

We know what a tortuous process it was getting to where we are on the withdrawal provisions in the bill. How the Dogs had to be appeased and the Progs given the rubber hose.

The idea that discipline was going to have to be maintained to support an indefinite series of votes on three-monthly bills...

Could it be that this suggestion is coming from Dogs precisely because they know it will be unworkable? And, when it breaks down, the leadership will cave, and the Dogs will wag their fingers saying they should never have started in on the whole business of trying a binding curb on Bush's  war!

Chris talks about

an increasingly divided Republican caucus

For one thing, they're on defense: they haven't got the responsibility of passing apps bills.

For another, they are able to take (with a smidegon of plausibility) the line that they are the ones supporting the institutions and traditions of government, while the Dems are dangerous radicals undermining those institutions and traditions.

On the question of timelines, there seems to me to be an arguable incompatibility between a bill providing funding to June 30 2007 (say) and a timeline starting withdrawal in March 2008 (say).

It also tends to enhance (in the GOP's version) the Dem position as being less than straightforward.

At the very least, it makes explaining the plan to Sixpack more complex for the Dems.

Also - I'm not sure whether Chris is talking about changing the bill now or about the three-monthly bills being put forward in post-veto play.

I can see no justification for the Dems leaderships doing other than passing the current bill and drawing the veto.

As will be obvious, I'm not clear at all on post-veto strategy right now; but on staying the course as far as the veto - that looks like a no-brainer to me.

(The FY08 DOD bills - the authorization as well as the appropriation bill - will have to be factored in to any strategy on Iraq withdrawal: my understanding was that FY07 was supposed to be the last Iraq supplemental, with Iraq expenditure provided for in the main FY08 bill.)

The problem with the continuing resolutions strategy is that it only works as a short term strategy. In the long term, the plan potentially transforms into an effective blank check if Bush decides to stonewall and refuses to compromise in any way, shape, or form, indefinitely-- in other words, if Bush continues with the exact same behavior he's engaging in now. There is no reason Bush cannot just keep stonewalling and making Congress pass a new resolution every three weeks until it's January of 2009. Sure, the longer this goes on then most likely the more pressure the public will put on the White House to cave, but this doesn't make any difference from the White House's perspective since they have made it abundantly clear they don't care what the public thinks.

So while the continuing resolutions strategy does look like an attractive way forward, it should not be embraced unless there's some clear endgame in mind. The plan needs to be not "we'll pass continuing resolutions" but "we'll pass continuing resolutions, then [something]". It needs to be made clear either that there's some point when the mini-blank-checks run out-- i.e., make it clear the continuing resolution thing isn't something the Democrats are willing to do long term, it's just a way of getting an extra two months to debate all this-- or there needs to be some specific idea of some thing that the Democrats think is going to happen once a sufficient number of the mini-blank-checks have been burned through that will allow the continuing resolutions to stop. The idea of directing the building public pressure not at Bush but at Congressional Republicans (who actually have to someday worry about being reelected), and thus turning the plan into "we'll pass continuing resolutions, then eventually the Congressional Republicans will cave and give us a veto override" is a good example of such an endgame strategy, although I have trouble seeing that one as terribly realistic in practice.

Bush's default strategy in the War on Iraq right now is to stall. This means that the challenge in any Democratic strategy on Iraq is how to respond when the White House stalls. How do we prevent the continuing resolutions strategy from being susceptible to stalling or stonewalling? How do we ensure that the continuing resolutions don't just wind up taking us all the way to 2009 with nothing changing?

We need to keep pressing and be seen to maintain flexibility.

The current talking point is that the surge is working so we shouldn't set a deadline. That needs to be turned around.
If the surge is working, what is the problem with a deadline?

The next talking point is we need flexibility and are telegraphing our moves to the enemy. The counter to this is to put some flexibility into the bill. Keep the deadline but put "fast track" language into it. At the request of the Iraqi government the administration can present a modification of the deadlines once every three months for a quick up or down vote. This would probably enhance our negotiating position in Iraq and throughout the region.

First of all I think the Dems must make Bush veto this first bill.  I don't know if that is under debate here or not.  I think that unless they make him veto it there is no hope of winning the PR battle, it will be seen exclusively as a capitulation.

I think doing partial bills is the right strategy --  the Republicans will not want to have to vote any more than they absolutely need to on this.  At some point, especially if the conditions in Iraq do not improve (and how many think they will at this point?), there will be enough Republicans who will override a Bush veto to end the war.

My impression is that both Republican caucuses are terrified of going into another election with the war resolved.  The war is not politically or strategically sustainable, and the White House is once again just playing a political macho man game of chicken with our nation's armed services and good name.

The only way for the Democrats to lose on this one is if they are seen to buckle under the political pressure and/or not stand up for their base and the swing '06 voters by doing everything they can to end this war.

The public (and I hope the net roots!!) understand that without a lot of Republicans coming over to help that this war will not end.  The Democrats cannot do it through their own votes alone.  If the Democratic leadership and the caucuses are brave enough and just try to do what ever they can they will be rewarded.  I believe the voters are actually savvy enough to understand that.  But, if the party folds they will lose so much respect.

So, we must be strong and call Bush on his bluff.  If he wants to destroy his party and continue to ruin he military just so he can prove something to himself, then fine.

Lastly, two points.

(1) I think in addition to the legislative strategy that the Dems should do a version of their own "Mission Accomplished."  We should start saying how PROUD we are of our troops and armed services, that they have done EXACTLY what was asked of them, their BRAVERY is to be admired.  We want to welcome them home as victors who have served their country.  We are sorry the President thinks they have not served well enough to win the victory we as a nation asked them too, but it is time for us to recognize their achievement and come home.  This forces the "Mission Accomplished" President to talk about what has NOT been done and to define the mission some what.

(2) And, on the pork issue, it will ultimately not hurt the Dems I don't think because the underlying issue (Iraq) is such a pervasive and all-important issue.  Also, taking the pork out is not really an option since that is how a lot of the coalition was put together.

Benchmarks for money. Bush would actually have to prove that he/Iraq is meeting the required benchmarks before he gets the next alottment of money. 3 month updates with congress sounds good.

OKAY, HERE IS MY BILL:

#     A strict six month time-line by which all troops MUST BE OUT!

#     A supplemental of exactly $0.00. THE USA IS NOW BANKRUPT (!!!) AND WE SIMPLY CANNOT AFFORD $124 BILLION to enable Bush to attack IRAN!!!

You probably know the old joke:

"Would you sleep with me for $1,000,000?"
"Sure."
"Well, then would you sleep with me for $100?"
"What kind of woman do you take me for?"
"We've established that, madam.  We're now haggling over your price."

I say we should pin the Republicans down in a similar way:  

"Would you accept a withdrawal deadline in 2037?"

I'm not sure how to put that in legislative form, but the notion that we can somehow catch "the terrorists" by surprise when we finally do withdraw is obviously nuts.  So we have no choice but to "signal" our withdrawal, and the ONLY question is the date.  

-- TP

Here's another possibility:

We may be artificially limiting ourselves by waiting for the veto, and playing into BushCorp's "Time's wasting" game.

Since the veto is announced and all but done, why not immediately get to work on an even tougher spending authorization.

Placing our honorable opponent in the position of accepting what he can get, or having something even more restrictive land on his desk.

At that point it may be clearer who is preventing funding.  And why.

----

An alternate ... segmenting the funding.  No big blank check pot.  X dollars for continued operations with a cutoff.  Y dollars with an earmark for withdrawal planning and execution.