Debate shifts from war funding

By Lisa Mascaro

Sunday, June 29, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Here in the capital, as it must be in military towns across the country, it’s easy to remember there is a war going on.

Uniformed military personnel routinely walk the streets. Defense contractors advertise in subway posters.

Sometimes, when a lone trumpeter is practicing taps from the historic Marine Corps Barracks on Capitol Hill, you can’t help but think of the men and women in the desert half a world away. If that sounds cheesy, just know it’s not.

But sometimes even Washington is tired of talking about the war.

One night late last week, without much promotion or protest, Congress sent the White House the last war spending bill of the Bush administration.

The $162 billion will pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan until summer 2009, long after the president has retired.

Absent were the passionate floor speeches that once punctuated the war debate. No unorthodox Saturday vote or Senate all-nighter as happened last year.

Funding the war has become a given.

Those who question the war can only, at best, take care of the troops coming home. “The least we can do,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said.

Most Americans have made up their minds against the war and want the troops home. A New York Times columnist wrote last Sunday that ever since early 2007, when pollsters started hearing such attitudes from a majority of Americans, opinions have not swayed.

All that most Americans are waiting for now, the columnist wrote, is the exit plan.

Democrats learned early on that their 2006 campaign promise to “change course” in the war would be easier said than done. There was a brief moment, about this time last year, when troop deaths in Iraq spiked again and the public was restless. Democrats thought they might enlist enough Republicans to confront Bush. But that moment quickly passed.

Instead Congress turned its attention to passing a new GI Bill to help the 2 million post-Sept. 11 vets readjust to civilian life.

The bill would give returning vets enough money to attend the public college or university of their choice. It would cost $61 billion over the next decade.

Patrick Campbell, a former Iraq war combat medic who led lobbying efforts for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said last week he wore out three pairs of shoes over the past 18 months pounding the Hill for votes.

Reid and Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley were easy gets. They immediately supported the bill.

Republicans proved more daunting. President Bush opposed the bill, as the Defense Department worried it might harm retention: Given the choice, troops might choose college over the military.

Rep. Jon Porter was the first of the Nevada’s Republican lawmakers, and one of 32 from his party, to break ranks in May to support the bill.

Rep. Dean Heller initially declined, as did Sen. John Ensign. Heller was worried that a millionaires tax to pay for the bill would hurt small businesses. The House version attached a 1 percent tax on annual incomes above $500,000 or $1 million for couples — the closest Congress has come to levying a war tax. Ensign worried about troop retention.

Once the tax was eliminated, and a provision was inserted to transfer unused benefits to family members, the two Nevada Republicans came on board.

At a news conference last week, Campbell held up an issue of Army Times, the military paper he said he read regularly while waiting for the days to pass in Iraq. The headline: “Fat New GI Bill Approved.”

He could only imagine how the news was received in the desert. “When they’re sitting in their Humvees, and talking about what their life’s going to be like when they get home, their dreams are going to be bigger,” Campbell said. “Everything’s changed.”

Sort of. His reserve unit is heading back to Iraq. They are expected to be there this time next year.