The Senate held a rare Saturday session today to attempt to vote on the same to-the-point non-binding resolution opposing the escalation in Iraq that the House passed yesterday. They were four votes shy of the 60 they needed to invoke cloture and move to a final vote. Now, since we’re talking about something non-binding anyway, I don’t have a problem with saying that the 56 senators who voted for cloture supported the resolution, although there might be one or two that would try to wiggle and say they were just in favor of moving to a final vote.
The problem is, if you need 60 votes to pass anything, and you can’t get that many on a non-binding resolution, it doesn’t seem feasible to think that you can get 60 on any binding legislation that would change policy in Iraq. The closest thing I can think of right now is Jack Murtha’s plan to attach riders to appropriations bills setting certain requirements for troop readiness, equipment, training, and recovery time that would reduce the number of troops Bush can send into Iraq. Now, I think that’s a constitutionally valid option – Congress has the power to govern the construction of the armed forces, and basic standards of readiness fall into that area, in my opinion. And the beauty of attaching these restrictions to an appropriations bill is that if Republicans try to block, they’ll be the ones preventing the military from getting funding.
But I have to admit I’m not terribly confident that such a tactic will work. I think the media coverage, much of the public, and even some Democratics members of Congress will see putting those restrictions on funding to be an act of blocking the funding, especially since I’ll bet the ranch that Bush would veto such a bill and you’ll never find enough votes to override it. I sure hope I’m wrong about that, though.