They Did It

You have to go back and wonder why the Democrats made a fuss at all if it just led to this.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi will present a plan to House Democrats for a war funding bill that won't include a timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq but will feature benchmarks with consequences, according to Democratic leadership aides.

The bill also would raise the minimum wage to $7.25 per hour from $5.15 per hour, and fund other domestic spending programs, which were still being negotiated [...]

The legislation would provide more than $90 billion to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through September 30, the end of the fiscal year.

Leadership aides said the benchmarks would be tied to Iraq reconstruction aid and would require President Bush to present to Congress 18 reports before August.

They said Democrats won't give up on a deadline for pulling troops out of Iraq, hoping to write language into defense appropriations and defense authorization bills over the summer.

Ooh, Bush has to make reports! What's the penalty if he doesn't, a strongly worded letter?

This is exactly what Russ Feingold says it is, no matter how the leadership tries to pretty it up.

This situation is a collapse for Democrats. We had a strong start, pushed back against the President’s failed policy and held our ground that the supplemental should include binding language to end the war. But now, as Congress gets ready to send the President a bill that does nothing to get our troops out of Iraq, we are just folding our cards. As one person commented under Greg Sargent’s great post at TPM cafe, "Send the Congressional Dems over to my place for some poker - I could use a windfall right now."

This is no time to back down. This fight to end the war isn’t something that we can just put off or kick down the road [...] Why should this wait until September? First Americans had to put up with a Republican Congress that did nothing, and now we are faced with a Democratic Congress that is giving the President exactly what he wants – continuing his failed policy and leaving our troops stuck in the middle of a civil war. Some strategy. We can’t back down when the stakes are so high. I know you’ll keep ratcheting up the pressure, and that’s exactly what we need right now. Now is the time to be pulling out all the stops to end the war.

The leadership is so far behind the American people it's scary. And their negotiating skills with the White House are non-existent. "We want a timeline." "No." "OK."

I don't know why they would raise the stakes by sending a funding bill with a timeline, only to lower the stakes afterward. That's just disheartening to your supporters. It just makes people angry, and I can't blame anyone who says "That's it, I'm done with the Democratic Party" after this. I'm not yet one of them, mainly because of the words of people like Feingold. But clearly this is very disappointing.