A Democratic Party plan to withdraw US combat troops from Iraq by next year passed a key test in the House of Representatives today, but the Senate failed to impose a similar deadline for ending the 4-year-old war.
On a mostly partisan 36-28 vote, the House Appropriations Committee approved a $124.1 billion emergency spending bill, including $95.5 billion to continue fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year.
The legislation, which could be debated in the full House as early as next week, would set strict conditions on continuing the Iraq war for the next 18 months and would end U.S. combat there by Sept. 1, 2008.
The White House has threatened a presidential veto of the measure, which first faces tough going in the Senate.
"We are trying to deliver a message to the politicians in Iraq that we are not going to sit around forever watching them dither, watching them refuse to compromise, while our troops die," House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat, said as his panel began a sometimes-heated debate on the war.
The legislation marks the first time a congressional committee voted to put binding limits on the duration of the 4-year-old war in Iraq.
As the House panel voted, the Senate debated a separate Democratic resolution encouraging President George W. Bush to bring US troops home by March 31, 2008.
That measure failed on a 50-48 vote in which 60 votes were needed for passage, but anti-war senators may try again in the spending measure.
"This is a process. Step by step, we're moving towards having our soldiers, sailors, and Marines return home from Iraq. That is what this is all about," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, told reporters before the vote.
Even if congressional Democrats fail to enact legislation to end the increasingly unpopular war, they are hoping to accomplish two things - to deliver on last year's campaign promise that they would try to bring the troops home and to apply pressure on the Iraqi government to take more responsibility for security.