Another was to limit military funding to withdrawal. This failed by acclamation, and Congressman Anthony Weiner, chairing the proceedings, moved on to the next amendment before anyone requested a count of the vote. So we don't even now what the number of Yes votes was here. [UPDATE: A vote was recorded: 100 to 321.]
The third amendment, McGovern's, was to require the president to present Congress with 1) a new National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan by January 31, 2011 and 2) a plan by April 4, 2011, on "the safe, orderly and expeditious redeployment of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, including a timeframe for the completion of the redeployment." In addition -- and this was a late addition to the amendment strengthening it considerably -- Congress would be required to vote by July 2011 "if it wants to allow the obligation and expenditure of funds for Afghanistan in a manner that is not consistent with the president's announced policy of December 2009 to begin to drawdown troops by July 2011." This amendment failed by a vote of 162 to 260.
The 162 included a handful of Republicans and represented a significant number of congress members willing to at least go on record as somewhat favoring minimal involvement for Congress in one of its chief areas of responsibility: war. I say "somewhat" because we don't know how many of the 162 would still have voted Yes if pressured by the leadership not to.
The non-war-related amendment, to fund teachers and disaster relief, passed 239 to 181 with 1 voting "present." This vote, heavily promoted by teachers' unions -- which tended never to mention the war funding -- guaranteed passage of the war funding, since the rule required that at least one amendment pass.
THE SENATE AND THE PRESIDENT
The Senate is out of session for the anti-imperial imperial holiday of July 4th. It will have to deal with the House bill, which differs from the Senate version.
The President on Thursday threatened to veto the bill because of an item in the teachers and disaster relief amendment. Congress is careful to pay for non-war items with cuts elsewhere, while funding wars on a Chinese credit card. In order to pay for funds to save some teachers from layoffs at US schools, the amendment took away a small fraction of a slush fund used by the Secretary of Education to encourage corporatist approaches to education. Let's hope that, if the Senate doesn't strip out the offending provision for him, our president follows through and blocks an escalation of a war.
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