War Funding Bill Will Put Pelosi's Strength to the Test

Pelosi says Democrats now have the leverage to stand up to the president. (By Melissa Golden -- Getty Images)

Republican leaders still say Pelosi's stands on warrantless surveillance and Colombia have put her on the wrong side of public opinion and are doing real damage to the economy and national security.

"If they're feeling their oats, I wish they'd feel them in areas that are less dangerous to the country," said House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.).

There is no question, however, that Pelosi's battles with Bush have buoyed House Democratic spirits. In the next two weeks her resolve will be put to the test.

By month's end, House Democrats plan to produce a major supplemental spending bill -- totaling as much as $170 billion -- to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan into the next presidency, channel more federal money to the ailing domestic economy and set policies that they hope will begin to move U.S. troops out of the Middle East.

"I think it's important for the government of Iraq to know that they're going to have to take responsibility for the security of their own country, and soon," Pelosi said. "And that's why the message in a supplemental or something else about redeployment is essential to this, or else they will never move."

Democratic leaders have repeatedly said that, in the end, U.S. troops in the field will be funded. But expectations are high that finally Congress will be able to extract a significant policy concession for that money.

Win Without War, a coalition of 42 groups, is circulating a letter declaring that "it is past time to bring the Iraq war to an end" and that "the best course of action in the upcoming defense supplemental appropriations bill is to provide funding only for the safe and timely redeployment of U.S. troops out of Iraq."

Antiwar Democrats are girding for a two-front battle. First, they want to beat back efforts to add popular domestic spending to any war funding, which would bolster support for the underlying bill. Then they want to stop any funding for the continuation of combat in Iraq.

"We have two examples of what can happen when the caucus is unified enough to say no," said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), a founder of the Out of Iraq Caucus.

Democrats -- and many Republicans -- have made clear in recent days that Bush cannot expect to get what he has demanded: a $108 billion war funding bill that hews to the letter of his request -- no added domestic spending, no curtailment of his war-making authority.

Members of both parties in the House and Senate introduced legislation this week to give Iraq additional reconstruction aid in loans, not grants, and to force an Iraqi government flush with petrodollars to assume more of the cost of training and equipping its own forces.

"The time has come to end this blank-check policy and require the Iraqis to invest in their own future," Sens. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) wrote Thursday in a letter to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Senate leaders.