The war is over

By Libby

Well, not really over, although that's what Jesse Jackson was shouting on the House floor yesterday in the aftermath of this vote.

The House failed to pass a measure funding the war in Iraq on Thursday afternoon by a vote of 141 to 149, with 132 Republicans voting �present� to protest what they see as unfair treatment by the Democratic majority. [...]

The House did approve two other war-related measures, one that included nonbinding language to remove troops from Iraq and another that included an expansion of veterans' education benefits and other domestic spending initiatives.

Neither of the last two votes are veto proof and the non-binding withdrawal language is the usual meaningless theater of course. The whole thing now moves to the Senate where no doubt the funding will be restored, but still, it's the most action we've seen from the Dems in a long time and Matt Stoller unearths this gem from the proceedings.

Finally the GI bill passed with overwhelming margin of 256 votes in the House, including 32 Republicans. It included a war surtax of one half of one percent on people making over $500k a year to pay for the GI bill, at the behest of Blue Dogs.

That's rather phenonmenal in an election year and one hopes it indicates that the Beltway is finally wising up to the temperment among the masses. Meanwhile, this could really complicate matters.

The so-called Ag-Jobs amendment, sponsored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Larry Craig (R-Idaho), would create a process that allows undocumented workers to continue to work on farms. Without the amendment, Feinstein warned that the U.S. would lose $5-9 billion to foreign competition, tens of thousands of farms would shut down and 80,000 workers would be transferred to Mexico. The bill would sunset in five years.

"Agriculture needs a consistent workforce," Feinstein said. "Without it, they can't plant, they can't prune, they can't pick and they can't pack.

She's right of course. With food prices skyrocketing already, the farmers need the immigrants, legal or not to get in the crops but the anti-immigrant crowd, which is large and somewhat bi-partisan within the public, is going to raise a ruckus and it could well delay the funding for a long time.

In any event, I think Jesse is right that this is beginning of the end of the 'war.' As Matt notes, we've reached a tipping point and continuing the occupation is becoming politically unsustainable. Our next job in Blogtopia will be to fight against leaving residual troops beyond those absolutely necessary to protect the boondoggle otherwise known as the US embassy.