Congress left with no choice but to fund war

C ongress finally has done what seemed inevitable from the outset, passing a bill late Thursday that funds the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through Sept. 30, to the tune of about $95 billion. And it’s without a timetable for beginning the withdrawal of American troops or even imposing standards regarding troop training, readiness and rest requirements.

In the process, Democrats demanded and got more punishment for taxpayers, in the form of a domestic agenda that spends some $17 billion more than President Bush had requested, including hurricane relief, farm aid and $60 million in subsidies for West Coast salmon

fishermen.

They also won an increase in the federal minimum wage, from $5.15 an hour to $7.25, in three separate installments, which economists almost universally say will end up harming the very people it is ostensibly intended to help. But that’s hardly a novelty when it comes to government programs.

Despite grumbling from some anti-war quarters, this bill was virtually the only possible outcome. However they might feel about how ill-advised the war was in the first place, or how poorly it has been conducted to date, congressional Democrats were not about to leave

themselves open to the charge that they were leaving troops in combat areas without continued funding.

President Bush vetoed a previously proposed funding bill with deadlines and timetables and Congress failed to muster a veto-proof, two-thirds majority. So this result was virtually foretold.

So did President Bush win this round? He did, at least in one way. He got a bill without timetables, and what the Democrats won — more spending and more federal mandates — reinforces the idea that despite the big-spending record of a Republican-dominated Congress over the previous six years, Democrats are still, even more so, the party of big government. Whether that will serve the party well in 2008 is an open question.

It is more difficult to assess whether the protracted wrangling in Washington did anything to bring the end of the Iraq war any closer. The current funding bill lasts only through September, so more scrutiny will be brought to bear on the war in the coming months. While few Americans want to see funding cut off abruptly, most want to see the war end. Even Republicans who have supported the president so far would rather see the Iraq war in the rear-view mirror than in the headlights as the 2008 elections approach. But this is an extraordinarily stubborn (or firmly committed) president who seems to believe continuing the war as part of anti-terrorism measures is less dangerous than ending it.

Having opposed this war since before the unprovoked U.S. invasion of Iraq, we are disappointed but resigned.

Perhaps the best hope is that having seen the consequences of rushing to war in Iraq, Congress and the American people will be more prudent next time an American leader starts touting a dubious war as the only available option.