Senate Dems to try again on the ‘surge’

[cal04]

As Senate Democrats seek votes on capping troop numbers and funding for Iraq, they may use the pending bill on the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission as a vehicle. That would set up a replay of the debate over funding for troops that this week derailed their leadership-backed non-binding resolution on President Bush’s “surge” proposal.

Despite the minority’s decision to block the start of an Iraq debate, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has vowed to put Republicans on record on the “surge” plan, which has opened GOP fissures over President Bush’s unpopular war policy. But any up-or-down vote on the binding restraints backed by the Democrats’ more vocal war critics would expose equally potent tensions in their own caucus.

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) said yesterday that the 9/11 Commission bill, slated for floor debate after the continuing resolution that is next up for the Senate, is a “good opportunity” to bring up his proposal for a binding funding cutoff for future deployments to Iraq.

Feingold said he and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), the only other Democrat who indicated he would oppose the Reid-backed non-binding resolution, are amassing consensus among anti-war lawmakers: “We’re working very closely together with a number of senators who think we are not going far enough.”

http://www.thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/020707/surge.html

[bemildred]

1. I would think the majority in the Senate could debate anything it liked.

I find this whole dog-and-pony show about whether the senate can debate a non-binding resolution unconvincing. They blather about the rules. Well who makes the rules? Where do the rules come from? They are not written in the Constitution. The Senate makes its own rules, or rather the rules committee does. So who runs the rules committee? The Democrats do, I thought. So, it appears, they have made rules that allow them to avoid debating this non-binding resolution while blaming the Repukes.

[tom_paine]

2. GOOD!

n/t