WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama`s Democratic allies beat back a stiff anti-war insurrection in their own ranks Thursday as the House of Representatives agreed to fund his Afghanistan troop "surge."
A day after General David Petraeus won Senate confirmation as commander of the NATO and US campaign by a 99-0 margin, the House approved a bill to pump another 37 billion dollars into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Lawmakers approved the monies -- including funds necessary to Obama`s plan to deploy another 30,000 troops to turn the faltering campaign around -- only after giving voice to a growing chorus of Democratic calls for a withdrawal.
Democrats backing the war, allied with the president`s Republican foes, turned aside three amendments that posed stiff challenges to Obama`s strategy.
The House struck down one measure to cut all military spending from the bill by a 376-25 margin, and killing another to restrict the money to pay for a withdrawal of US forces by a 321-100 margin.
In a 260-162 vote, they also defeated a Democratic amendment aimed at requiring Obama, who has set a July 2011 deadline for starting a US withdrawal, to set a complete timetable for that process.
Democrats accounted for the lion`s share of the yes votes in each case.
But the fate of the bill was still clouded after Democrats attached more than 15 billion dollars in jobs and education programs in a 239-182 that defied a presidential veto threat over cuts designed to pay for the measure.
The House changes meant the Senate, which approved the administration`s request for the vastly unpopular Afghan war in May, would have to take up the measure the week of July 12 after the week-long July 4 recess.
The amendments reflected growing US public pessimism about the war, by some measures now the longest in US history, ahead of key November mid-term elections.
"Every dollar spent and every life wasted in Vietnam was just that: A waste," said Democratic Representative Jerrold Nadler. "Afghanistan is the same. Every dollar we spend, every life we waste is a waste."
The spending bill also included nearly three billion in aid for Haiti in the wake of the devastating earthquake there, 701 million dollars of increased US-Mexico border security and 304 million dollars for the response to the catastrophic Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
Democratic Representative Dave Obey, chairman of the powerful appropriations committee that controls spending said the war measure would bring to 167 billion dollars the total outlays for Iraq and Afghanistan in 2010.
Such vast expenditures are "killing our ability to finance a recovery of our own economy," he said, echoing an increasingly heard complaint among Democrats eager to champion social spending and investments to blunt high joblessness.
Representative Buck McKeon, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, accused Democrats of "taking dangerous political potshots at our troops` mission" with Petraeus on his way to take command.
"We should stand in unity with him. Yet, we might actually line up and take vote after vote to strip funding from our warfighters before his plane even touches down in Kabul," said McKeon.
Shortly before the first vote on the legislation, the White House warned that Obama would reject any bill that denied him "the utmost flexibility and discretion" in the war effort.
"If the final bill presented to the President contains provisions that would undermine his ability as Commander in Chief to conduct military operations in Afghanistan, the president`s senior advisers would recommend a veto," it said.
The White House welcomed the addition of education monies aimed at helping struggling states avoid teacher layoffs, but threatened a veto over 800 million dollars in cuts to pay for the bill.
BDST: 09:43 HRS, July 2, 2010
