Dems Gird for Battle (with the White House)

So the saga that is the Iraq/Afghanistan supplemental continues today, with word that Congressional Democrats--having decided the big issues--are ready to begin a conference on the legislation.

Roll Call ($) reports that Democratic leaders are breaking the bad news to House liberals--the conference report won't force a surrender in Iraq on a date certain:

Pelosi met with members of the Out of Iraq Caucus on the issue Tuesday, and she said Wednesday that she is confident that they will have the votes to pass the supplemental next week...

"I can vote for anything that continues to put pressure on Bush," said House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.). "I have always said it isn't the language that matters--we aren't writing the Declaration of Independence. It's whether we're putting pressure on Bush."

Obey then gestured to the Republican side of the House and said he wants to put them on the spot to vote "again and again and again until they say, â€˜I'm sorry, Mr. President, our tongues are hanging and we're not going to do it any more...'"

Meanwhile, House Republicans will try return the favor, by getting Democrats on record on the 'forced surrender' provision. This won't be a tough vote for many Democrats, who'll be eager to cast a vote that pleases their base. But the GOP gains politically either way. If Democrats vote to keep the House's strict language, Republicans can fairly say that the Dems support withdrawal regardless of the conditions on the ground. If they vote against it, Republicans can point out that their own position can't be all that unreasonable, if some Democrats are voting for it as well.

The Roll Call piece goes on to look at some of the House liberals who are unhappy at the decision to ditch the more extreme position:

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), one of many freshman Democrats elected on a platform of ending the war, said that he was uncomfortable voting for a weaker bill.

"I'm not going to lock myself into anything now, but I had a very tough time getting to the last vote and to go much further would stretch me beyond what I can do," he said. Ellison urged his colleagues to stand firm against Bush's veto threats. "This is nothing more than him trying to make Congress knuckle under," he said...

Other Members, however, including Rep. RaÃºl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who voted in support of the Iraq spending bill in March, said it remains less clear whether they will back any measure that contains fewer restrictions than the current House version.

"It was a difficult vote then, it becomes an even more difficult vote now," Grijalva said Wednesday. During the March vote, the Arizona lawmaker noted that he would have opposed the bill but felt he had to support his Democratic colleagues.

Without the same accountability measures, including benchmarks for the Iraqi government and the timeline, however, Grijalva said he will not support a compromise legislation. "Right now, it's not even a slim chance," he said...

I don't expect that the conference report will encounter too much difficulty passing the House. Yes, some liberals will defect, and their votes will have to be made up from among the Blue Dogs. However, everyone knows that this vote is play acting; it's about nothing more than political pressure on the president. Further, it will be followed by a vote on another version of the supplemental that is likely to eliminate the provisions on withdrawal dates, and instead simply tie political and economic assistance to Iraq achieving political goals. That will be the real test. Liberals won't even be able to pretend that the measure forces the U.S. to get out of Iraq, and they'll have a real hard time voting for it.

Unwilling to craft a 'clean' supplemental, Democratic leaders won't get many Republican votes, so their job is about to get much harder. While few want to see this drag out for months, they might even look to some version of the 'micro-funding' strategy, which Congressman Allen Boyd spoke of favorably in Congressional Quarterly: