Quest for a final bill on Iraq war funding

It's almost 100 days after President Bush requested emergency funds for the Iraq war, and Congress and the White House are converging on a deal that includes benchmarks for progress for the Iraqi government, including a national oil law and provincial elections.

For Democrats now controlling Congress, these benchmarks – plucked right from the president's 2007 State of the Union address – are a way to avoid giving the White House "a blank check" on a war that a majority of Americans now oppose.

Both sides see the next two weeks as critical. House leaders expect to have a bill to fund the troops that Mr. Bush will sign by Memorial Day, said House majority leader Steny Hoyer in an interview Sunday on C-SPAN's "Newsmakers."

In a letter to Congress last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that the funding delay has already caused disruptions and "increases the readiness risk of our military with each passing day."

Bush vetoed Congress's first war-funding bill on May 1 because it set "arbitrary deadlines" for the withdrawal of US forces. He has threatened to veto a second version, which passed the House in a 221-205 vote on Thursday, because it delays more than half the funding until after July – and then, only if the White House can report progress on both the security situation on the ground and political reconciliation among Iraqi groups.

Now the focus shifts to the Senate, where majority leader Harry Reid and White House officials have been hunkered down in secret negotiations. Last week, Bush said he had empowered White House negotiators "to find common ground on benchmarks."

But lawmakers in the House and Senate are still grappling with what consequences should be attached to these benchmarks – and even what they mean.

The House war-funding bill that passed last week includes benchmarks for the Iraqi government and ties funds to meeting them. It proposes holding back $52.8 billion of the $95.5 billion provided to the Department of Defense until the president reports the Iraqis are moving toward specific goals.

These goals include reducing sectarian violence in Iraq, ensuring the rights of minority parties, preparing for provincial and local elections, reforming the process of de-Baathification, beginning expenditure of $10 billion in Iraqi revenues for reconstruction projects, and enacting "a broadly accepted hydro-carbon law that equitably shares oil revenues among all Iraqis."

In particular, the issue of how to deal with Iraq's oil resources is emerging as a divisive issue in Congress.

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