Cloture on HR 2 (the minimum wage bill) passed yesterday, so Senate decks are cleared for battle next week on the various texts of nonbinding Iraq resolutions.

According to the papers this morning (the Post,for instance), Biden (S Con Res 2) has been benched in favor of Warner (S Con Res 4).

But Warner with a twist:

The revised resolution would express the Senate's opposition to the troop increase but would vow to protect funding for the troops. The resolution does not include the Democratic language saying the Bush plan is against the national interest, but it also drops an earlier provision by Warner suggesting Senate support for some additional troops.

Uncle Harry is on board:

After reviewing the Warner revisions, Reid decided the new text would take the place of the original resolution, by Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.). He said the Senate will begin debating the resolution next week, provided Democrats and Republicans can agree on a way to overcome some procedural hurdles.

Procedural hurdles? Let's just hold that thought.

The Lioness is as well, up to a point:

House Democratic leaders reached the same decision, ordering committees to draft a resolution next week patterned on Warner's language. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) went further, publicly hinting she will push binding legislation that would begin bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq. "I believe that you'll see initiatives on the floor to this effect: that we have this year in which we should be able to drastically reduce the number of troops," she said in an interview broadcast on National Public Radio yesterday.

Now, in the Senate, S Con Res 4 (as revised) will, assuming a full Dem turnout (excluding Lieberman), need ten GOP for cloture, of which four are already sponsoring the bill.

What procedural hurdles are in question? Allowing votes on other texts? Timing of the cloture motion? Amount of debate time? I suspect it's something rather trickier, but have run into the brick wall of lack of expertise. (I know every brick...)

What about that binding legislation? Now, of course, legislation only becomes binding when the prez signs it. So anything stand-alone is going to go straight in the trash.

Wisely - though the more vociferous elements of the lefty sphere may disagree -

Other House leaders said they will not rush toward a legislative confrontation. Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on defense, are holding extensive hearings on the state of the U.S. military and the impact of further deployments, in the hope of building a political case for such a confrontation. But no proposals have emerged from those efforts.

And Murtha's bosom bud?

"My position is and has been, we're holding hearings now. We need to hear from Mr. Skelton, Mr. Murtha and others as to . . . their conclusions and recommendations. Until then, the answer is no," House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said when asked if the House was ready for such legislation.

(When he says my position, is that in contradistinction to the leadership's position?)

Talk in the past has been of apps riders either deny funds to troops in excess of a stated number or (more radically) cut off funds entirely (in what one might call a staged withdrawal).

The defense apps boys are working on something else, though:

Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), a member of Murtha's subcommittee, said the parameters of the legislation are already coming together. Legislative language, to be attached to a forthcoming "supplemental" war spending bill, would stipulate that only troops deemed fully trained and ready could be deployed to Iraq, and that National Guard and reserve troops could be deployed only for about a year. Such language would initially restrict Bush's ability to fully man his planned troop increase and over time would force troops to come home.

Now, that may be an easier sell to Joe Sixpack. But it's still essentially a proposed defunding.

Clearly, Bush will be something of an obstacle in enacting such a provision.

But could it even pass Congress?

In an earlier piece, I made the distinction between measures for which there is no majority, and measures for which there is a majority balked by procedural means. (I cited the example of the 1930s Senate on antilynching bills.)

My suspicion is that, on a clear up-or-down vote, no defunding provision has a majority in either house.

Now, measures can be saved as well as killed by procedural means: in particular, by wrapping them up in a package which is too hard to vote down.

Let's look at the House first: suppose the Apps Committee reports out an Iraq supplemental with a Moran rider.

In principle, the leadership could protect the rider by imposing a closed rule on floor action. However, this would be a departure from precedent (and a step away from the goo-goo promises in the long verion of New Direction.)

(Iraq supplementals for FY04 (HR 3289 (108th)) and FY06 (HR 4939 (109th)) were both debated under open rules in which screeds of amendments were offered on the House floor.)

So - a GOP offers an amendment to strike the Moran rider under the Five Minute Rule in the Committee of the Whole. If (my hypothesis) a majority of reps oppose the rider, they can vote for the amendment without affecting the rest of the bill.

Moreover, on a vote like that, no Dem rep has protection. What's the point of being the minority if you can't fudge an issue like this for your people?

Equally, suppose the supplemental is reported out without the rider: what's to stop some bomb-throwing bolshie from offering an amendment to insert it?

Of course, the problems for the Dem House leadership are not limited to the game of parliamentary shenanigans: my suspicion is that the House is split every bit as much as the Senate; and that letting the Senate go first is a pretext to delay bringing these splits into contention on the floor.

Things are harder for Harry, of course. If cloture on Warner is still not assured, a supplemental burdened with a Moran rider would surely stand no chance.

Even if the rider was in the text reported out, an amendment to strike the rider could be offered on the floor, and would only need a simple majority to pass. (I'd expect Reid to move to table (ie kill) the amendment, a nondebatable motion requiring a simple majority. If the MTT is defeated, it's usual for the amendment to be approved by voice vote. Even if pushed to a vote, again, that will only require a simple majority to pass.)

Of course, we'll get some idea of how the land lies on a defunding rider when the Senate debates the nonbinding resolution(s).

And - some intervening catastrophic event may cause the earth to shift under MCs.

But - I can't see any veto fodder heading Bush's way on Iraq in the foreseeable future.

Update [2007-2-1 16:38:53 by skeptic06]:

On further thought, I suspect that the procedural hurdles relate to the nature of floor amendments to S Con Res 4 and order in which they are taken.

In general, a unanimous consent agreement (unlike a special rule in the House) does not cover all floor action on a bill: for instance, on HR 2, there have been fresh UCAs made every day covering the following day's business.

But, with a short measure like S Con Res 4, I think a UCA might be got that does much the same thing as a special rule.

The goal of the Dem leadership would be to ensure that the res ends up with a text on which cloture can be secured. Clearly, there is a faction (Cornyn and friends) in the GOP that wishes no res to pass. Similarly, there is a Dem faction (Feingold and Dodd, apparently) for whom none of the texts on offer will be sufficiently hard to attract their votes.

Both of these factions would have an interest in devising a killer amendment: that is, an amendment with majority support whose adoption will cause the measure it amends to fail to pass.

For instance, the Feingold faction might take some of the Biden wording (at which Warner and other GOP balked) and offer an amendment to S Con Res 4 containing that wording: the object would be to put Dems on the spot so as to force them to vote for the amendment, thus decoupling GOP support for the res.

Clearly, if any faction thinks it's not getting a fair crack of the whip, there will be no unanimity and no UCA! The trick will be for Harry and his merry men to provide the anti factions in each party with enough to keep them on board without kiboshing the whole res.

I'll be fascinated to see how they do it. If they do it.