Congress puts its marker on Iraq war, but how big?

Senate Republicans also plan to try to strip nondefense-related expenditures from the bill. Sen. Tom Coburn (R) of Oklahoma, an earmark opponent, says he will offer amendments to strip nondefense-related projects from the bill, starting with the $100 million added to beef up security at the 2008 presidential conventions. He will challenge Democrats to show "why we should borrow from our grandchildren to have a party," especially on a bill to provide emergency funding for a war.

Democrats acknowledge that they do not have the two-thirds vote needed in both the House and Senate to override a presidential veto. Still, the vote sets a high-water mark for the assertion of congressional powers since Bush ordered US forces into Iraq four years ago this month.

"It's largely a symbolic vote," says Norman Ornstein, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "But the fact that the House, even by a narrow margin, accepted the concept of a date certain [for a pullout of US combat troops] means something. It will have an effect on the structure of public debate."

The wild card, over the next few weeks, is public opinion.

Facing the risk of depriving US forces of funding in wartime, the White House is counting on Congress to back down and pass a bill by April 15 that has no exit timetables and no nondefense add-ons.

But Democrats say public opinion may swing further in their direction, even in the event of a veto and a showdown on war funding.

"It's public opinion that determines the outcome," says Rep. Barney Frank (D) of Massachusetts. "People are very antiwar, and the greatest naiveté is too much cynicism, as when people say the public has nothing to do with this."

A subplot in Congress's debate over war funding is how lawmakers deal with nondefense add-ons for pet projects.

In its first test of new rules requiring disclosure of names of members sponsoring "earmarks," the House saw a spat over whether the spirit and letter of the anti-"pork" rules were met.

House leaders said last week that, in keeping with rules passed at the start of the new Congress, no member projects were included in the US Troop Readiness, Veterans' Health and Iraq Accountability Act.

Challenged as to why a $35 million add-on for NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi was not listed as an earmark, Rep. David Obey (D) of Michigan said, "An earmark is something that is requested by an individual member. This item was not requested by any individual member. It was put in the bill by me." (Rep. Gene Taylor (D) of Mississippi, in whose district the funds would be spent, did not support the bill.)

The move violates the spirit, if not the letter, of new House rules, say budget watchdog groups.

"It seems the commitment to reform was short-lived, as Congress fattens up the emergency-spending bill with special-interest goodies," says Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, a public-interest group in Washington.

Another public-interest group, Taxpayers for Common Sense, objected that Senate appropriators did not allow TV cameras or the public into their markup last week and that a transcript is not yet available to the public.

Below is a partial list of nonwar-related provisions added to the House emergency- spending bill.

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