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Congressmen Jack Kingston and John Doolittle today conducted a conference call with conservative bloggers.

Kingston noted that the line item veto would be on the floor tomorrow. He granted that some appropriators would vote against it but said that he and Doolittle, both appropriators, would vote for it.

Regarding the House's plans for hearings on immigration, the plan is to come back after August and work on a bill that can pass Congress. Doolittle says the hearings are necessary to "understand what really is in the Senate bill."

John Hawkins asked if the hearings strategy meant the bill was dead for the year. Kingston said he "hopes not" and that he "sure as heck would not support this if this were just a way to let it die slowly." 

I asked the Congressmen if they were content with coming back from the summer and passing another tough border security bill even if it meant no final bill coming from Congress. They both appeared to be comfortable with the possibility and noted the political unpopularity of the Senate's amnesty bill. "I would hate to pin my reelection and the House majority on the Senate's [position]," said Kingston.

Kingston and Doolittle acknowledge there may be a need to "forcefeed the Senate" on the issue of immigration by swaying public opinion over the summer. "We also find seperating ourselves from the Senate is helpful," said Kingston. Doolittle noted the institutional difference between the House and Senate: only one third of the Senate is facing the voters in the fall, everyone in the House is. Kingston thinks that, "Seperating ourselves from the Senate the closer we get to November may be standard operating procedure."

Democrats in the Senate are pursuing multiple amendments today that would create timetable for troop withdrawal or "redeployment." Senator John Cornyn today made the following remarks:

“We all want our troops to come home as soon as possible. But the debate today is about whether decisions in Iraq ought to be based on Iraq's ability to secure their nation—not on a political party’s ability to protect their electoral base.

“The Iraqis are moving forward, and the last thing we'd want to do is to jeopardize all of that by leaving precipitously and perhaps seeing it degenerate into a failed state and another platform for terrorists to export their attacks to the United States.

“So I really think our colleagues on the other side of the aisle should think a little longer, a little harder about these calls for withdrawals without consideration of the circumstances on the ground.”

This is why people are growing increasingly frustrated with Congress's third -- and biggest spending -- party:

Ted Stevens ($-AK), the Senate's welfare queen, is Chairman of the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. In that capacity, Senator Stevens is seeking to undermine a previously agreed to $873 billion spending cap for fiscal year 2007, by cutting appropriations to the Department of Defense. But, it's not what you think. He's cutting the Pentagon's budget to increase domestic social spending, knowing that he can subvert the cap by getting the $9 billion he intends to cut put back in the budget later in the fiscal year. Senator

Stevens's $9 billion purported cut, is actually a raid on the budget. He gets to cut defense spending now, increase social spending, then do a supplemental later in the year to put the defense money back and add additional earmarks.

This gimmickry is intended to trick observers and to spend more taxpayer dollars. Pathetic...just another reason that the Appropriations process has got to be reformed... 

National Journal's Danny Glover thinks they are getting there:

Glover's whole post is very interesting and it is worth taking the time to read. 

Much hyped potential 2008 Presidential candiate Mark Warner may regret hiring a card carrying member of the liberal netroots. Conversly, it could be possible that the liberal netroots in the future will regret their touting of Warner's candidacy.

Red State has a must read post on this: 

Back on January 14, 2005, Suellentrop wrote about the longstanding relationship between Markos Moulitsas Zuniga (a/k/a "Kos") and Jerome Armstrong. Suellentrop and others noticed a suspicious pattern developing. When Armstrong would start working for a candidate, Kos would start pimping the candidate.

In the long series of candidates pimped, we now find ourselves at 2008 presidential contender Mark Warner, who hired Jerome Armstrong to work for his campaign. Quid. Shortly thereafter Kos, in an interview, mentioned that Warner was a candidate who needed to be watched - even though Warner has kept a decidedly low profile on the Iraq War, which has otherwise been the signature issue of Kos-backed candidates. Quo? It seems that Warner's payments to Armstrong worked out well - except that the judgment that had Warner hire Armstrong could be what does him in. At a minimum, it suggests a gross failure on Warner's part to handle an essential requirement for a prospective president - vetting your staff to keep out known miscreants.

You see, in 2003 the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Armstrong with a violation of the federal securities laws* for touting a newly-traded stock called BluePoint on the "Raging Bull" internet message board in 2000 (at the height of the tech stock craze) without disclosing that he was paid at least $20,000 by the promoters of BluePoint. And Suellentrop reports that the SEC got Armstrong to agree to a bar from the business

The whole thing is worth reading. 

Democrats in the Senate are unable to find consensus on the Iraq issue. As the Senate debates the Department of Defense Appropriations bill, some Democrats are offering withdrawal resolutions, others are offering non-binding sense of the Senate relosutions while still others write wholly different amendments that would seemingly undermine the effort.

Congress Daily AM ($):

Unable to reach a party-wide consensus, Senate Democrats plan today to introduce two amendments to the FY07 defense authorization bill that offer vastly different views on how and when the United States should pull combat troops out of Iraq.

Most, if not all, Democrats believe the Bush administration should begin to decrease the number of U.S. troops deployed to Iraq this year. But the party remains divided over whether to mandate a firm timetable for complete withdrawal.

One wonders who in the Democratic party decided stirring up the Iraq issue on the DoD bill was a good idea. The more this issue is debated the more apparent it becomes that the minority party has no direction on the biggest issue facing our country.

UPDATE: The Note ponders: 

Could it be that the Democrats' inability to come up with a consensus 'anti-war' position is more of a midterm problem for them than HarrietMiersDubaideficits -Katrinaearmarksimmigrationgasprices is for the Republicans? After all the private meetings (including just endless ones in the Senate caucus), Democrats remain united in their disunity, defensiveness, and distraction.

H/T: Instapundit 

A friend on the Hill sends this report from a press conference today in which the Democrats called for a timetable for pull out of Iraq:

Sen. Reed: I've tried, and I Carl has tried, too, not to reflect simply the current moods of the people, but look on the ground to see what will allow us to finish this mission as successfully as possible. And that, in our view, is a phased redeployment of our forces out of Iraq in the most timely fashion; the timing to be determined on the ground by military commanders based upon the conditions on the ground.

Sen. Levin: Except that it would begin before the end of this year.

Sen. Reed: This year. I think it's important to do it this year.

Apparently not content with the drubbing they took last week, Democrats will continue this week to offer amendments in the Senate that would put a timeline on troop withdrawal. Last week in the Senate a John Kerry amendment to withdraw the troops garnered only single-digit support. This week an amendment craftet by Jack Reed and Carl Levin to begin a phased troop withdrawal will likely attract more support from Dems.

Republicans will welcome the effort. Hugh Hewitt thinks its a good thing:

Good for them. Honesty as to the Democratic Party's intent should it win a majority in either House is exactly what the electorate needs for November.

Congressional leaders agree. The feeling on the Hill is that this is as good a time as any to continue this debate. As Michael Barone points out, Republicans stand unified on Iraq whie the Democratic caucus is in disarray:

In the meantime, Republicans are trying to make this a comparative election between Republicans and Democrats, not just an up-or-down vote on Bush. Senate and House Republicans last week staged debates over whether to pull out of Iraq now or stay on. Democrats complained that these were meaningless debates aimed (as they said the debates on the constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriages were) at dividing voters. But on these issues it is the Democrats -- their officeholders and their voters -- who are divided, while the Republicans, with a few exceptions, are all on one side.

The Democrats have profited politically from bad news in Iraq. Good news puts things in a different light and raises the question of just what Democrats would do if in power. For the moment, they are, as ranking House Armed Services Democrat Ike Skelton said, "absolutely" divided. That's not a good posture from which to face the voters.

Meanwhile, The Democrats de facto leader on the Iraq issue, John Murtha, is tripping all over his own arguments. True to Democratic form, Murtha has done a 180 on his old opinion that withdrawal would be devastating and now wants all of our troops to set up camp in Okinawa, even though he can't muster a good argument as to how a strike force so remote could have a timely impact on developments in Iraq.

UPDATE: Much more criticism of the Murtha Okinawa plan here. 

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist today writes an Op-Ed for NRO in which he makes the case for giving the President a line item veto:

Partly as a result, Congress has a hard time eliminating unnecessary spending. The Office of Management and Budget, indeed, reports that over a quarter of all federal programs either do not work or can’t show any evidence that they do. Another 28 percent receive “adequate” ratings (indicating problems) while a mere 15 percent set and achieve the ambitious goals needed to earn OMB’s highest rating.

Michael Barone points out some encouraging news for Republicans:

The Democrats failed to win the special election in the 50th congressional district of California June 6. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed on June 7. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald announced he would not seek an indictment of chief Bush adviser Karl Rove on June 12. Bush made a dazzling surprise trip to Baghdad on June 13 and followed up with a confident press conference the next day. The Senate voted 93-6 on June 15 and the House 256-153 on June 17 against U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

A turning point in the president's political fortunes? Maybe. But I'm inclined to think that Bush and the Republicans were not in quite as much trouble as most in the press thought, and I'm not sure these developments will produce an immediate surge in Bush's poll ratings.

George Will points out how the immigration issue is playing in key races like Pennsylvania and concludes that Republicans up for reelection are content to aim for short term gain at the price of a long term loss:

The cost of this, paid in the coin of lost support among Latinos, the nation's largest and fastest growing minority, may be reckoned later, for years. Remember this: Out West, feelings of all sorts about immigration policy are particularly intense, and if John Kerry had won a total of 127,014 more votes in New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado, states with burgeoning Latino populations, he would have carried those states and won the election. But for now, the minds of Republican candidates are concentrated on a shorter time horizon -- the next four and a half months.

I am not so sure it has to be so cut and dry. I am also not convinced that this is a long-term calamity waiting to happen. 

According to Robert Novak, House Majority Leader John Boehner is telling people immigration reform is dead:

Boehner on Tuesday was upbeat in addressing a breakfast forum at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which supports a guest worker program. He indicated he would resolve differences between the restrictive House bill and the much more liberal Senate bill by the Fourth of July.

But at a closed luncheon Wednesday at Charlie Palmer's restaurant, attended by financial contributors to House Republicans, Boehner declared that the immigration bill was all but dead. That change followed Boehner's conversation late Tuesday with Hastert, who made clear he did not want to pursue the issue that splits the Republican Party.

Today the House of Representatives rejected troop withdrawal and announced further resolve to see it through in Iraq.

The AP:

The House on Friday handily rejected a timetable for pulling U.S. forces out of Iraq, culminating a fiercely partisan debate between Republicans and Democrats feeling the public's apprehension about war and the onrushing midterm campaign season.

In a 256-153 vote, the GOP-led House approved a nonbinding resolution that praises U.S. troops, labels the Iraq war part of the larger global fight against terrorism and says an "arbitrary date for the withdrawal or redeployment" of troops is not in the national interest.

"Retreat is not an option in Iraq," declared House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. "Achieving victory is our only option, for the American people and our kids."

"Stay the course, I don't think so Mr. President. It's time to face the facts," House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California answered, as she called for a new direction in the conflict. "The war in Iraq has been a mistake. I say, a grotesque mistake."

Today's vote was the culmination of a week's worth of GOP efforts to make a renewed push on the Iraq war. On the Senate side, troop withdrawal supported by John Kerry was roundly rebuffed in bipartisan fashion.

Republicans on the Hill finally feel the wind at their backs on this issue after the killing of Zarqawi. Meanwhile, Democrats this week were treated to a vicious intra-party fight over strategy that in the end seems to have shattered their caucus for the short term.

UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt has a copy of the text of today's House Resolution that drew the ire of a majority of the Dems. 

Congressional Quarterly reports:

That proposal is one of several that Frist intends to shoehorn into the already crowded summer schedule.

“I am not leaving the U.S. Senate without finding a permanent fix,” said the Tennessee Republican, who intends to leave Congress at the end of his term this year.

The package Frist is pushing for will have to be compromised in order to make ith through the Senate. The full death tax repeal was defeated in the Senate last week.

Horatius at Red State goes after Tom Tancredo for his brutish tactics towarnd fellow Repblicans engaged in the immigration debate.

Tom Tancredo is becoming a political hack, and there is simply no way that he speaks for all of the 99 Members who are in his caucus just because they think that illegal immigration is out of control and needs “reform.” It is time for his colleagues to publicly reveal that he doesn’t speak for them.

I agree. Yesterday in my column I expressed disappointment with the tactics of the Tancredo crowd, especially in regard to Mike Pence and his immigration reform plan: 

They’re so adamant about the perceived wrong-headedness of his plan that they appear willing to dismiss the young conservative as a has-been. Indeed, rather than disagreement followed by dialogue, some appear ready to banish the Republican Study Committee’s Chairman to the hinterlands of the conservative movement. In the above mentioned column Buchanan insists that the adoption of the Pence plan will mark “the end of Mike Pence as a rising star of the GOP.”

That would be a shame.

The idea that some so-called conservatives would abandon an up-and-coming Reaganite because they disagree with his good-faith attempt to find a workable immigration solution is a measure of the temperature at which this debate is being conducted.