The Senate approved $70 billion to continue funding the occupation of Iraq on Tuesday night, backtracking on earlier promises made by Democratic leaders to set a timetable for withdrawal from the region before giving the White House another blank check.

    The funds were attached to an omnibus spending bill to finance 11 government departments, making passage of the bill - in a form the president would sign - an urgent priority for many Senators, who stressed they would like to go home for the holidays with this year's federal spending settled.

    The omnibus passed the House last night with $31 billion for Afghanistan operations, over $10 billion of which can be used for body armor and "force protection" in Iraq. When that sum was raised to $70 billion in the Senate, it was also expanded to state that all monies could be used for either Iraq or Afghanistan.

    The Senate amendment, sponsored by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Joe Lieberman, roughly followed a preconceived bipartisan plan. Democratic leadership in both Houses discussed a plan last week to pass Afghanistan funding in the House, then to allow Republicans to attach a measure for Iraq funding in the Senate, hoping to produce a bill President Bush would approve.

    "If this amendment does not pass, the underlying bill will not become law," said Senator McConnell on the Senate floor. "To get a presidential signature will require the passage of the McConnell/Lieberman amendment."

    Although President Bush originally requested almost $200 billion for the wars, his spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said on Tuesday the president would agree to $70 billion "for now, if it comes to him in a clean bill" - with no timetables for withdrawal included. Despite months of promises they will not pass a "blank check for war," Democrats appear to be complying with Bush's demands as the omnibus bill moves back to the House for a vote tomorrow.

    "We thought 2007 was going to be the year we changed the course on Iraq, but now it looks like we'll have given the president two blank checks for the war by the end of this year," said Erik Leaver, policy outreach director for the Foreign Policy In Focus Project, referring to the 2007 war supplemental, which provided more than $100 billion in May. "The deal's gotten so thick at this point that people simply aren't going to vote no on this."

    The Democrats are dead-set on finishing their spending bills by Christmas, since a "getting-the-job-done" philosophy was one of their rallying cries when they took control of Congress at the beginning of the year, according to Leaver. In October, leading House Democrats vowed to avoid bringing any war spending bills to the floor before January, but when Bush warned last month such "delays" would lead to layoffs for many civilian Pentagon employees, Congress relented to a vote.

    According to a December Congressional Research Service report, the urgency surrounding the passage of war funding may be tinged with alarmism: Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan could be funded through March or April without layoffs, if the defense department took internal steps to slow spending.

    In an unanticipated move on Tuesday, Majority Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Russ Feingold proposed an amendment to partially withdraw US troops from Iraq within nine months. Twenty-two Democrats joined them in opposing unrestricted funding, providing for a brief moment of uncertainty on a plan that was expected to pass easily through the Senate.

    Feingold stressed the urgency of Iraq withdrawal, and cited it as a major issue among his constituents, most of whom oppose the war.

    "If those of us in Congress who want to end this war don't take every opportunity to push back against this administration, we will be just as responsible for keeping our troops in Iraq," Feingold said in a statement on Tuesday.

    The Reid/Feingold amendment would have cut troop levels more quickly than would General Petraeus's plan. Yet, the amendment called for troops to remain in Iraq to train Iraqi soldiers, protect American bases and carry out "targeted counterterrorism operations" - provisions similar to those delineated by President Bush in an agreement he signed with Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki last month. It would ultimately leave up to 70,000 troops in Iraq, plus a similar number of private contractors, according to Leaver.

    "It was more of a PR stunt at that point than any serious thinking on ending the war," Leaver said. "The Democrats want to go home saying, 'We tried our best.'" Leaver suggests the House passage of an Afghanistan-only bill on Monday was a similar move, placing the blame for continuing the Iraq War on the laps of the president and Republicans in Congress.

    Following the failure of the Feingold amendment, Sen. Carl Levin sponsored a legally nonbinding "sense of the Congress" amendment, which stated troops should be partially withdrawn "in a reasonable time." The amendment would not restrict the president in any way, and would fall in line with General Petraeus's plans for Iraq. Levin apologized for the amendment's weak language, saying it was "better than silence." The amendment failed.

    Bush warned on Monday he would not accept a bill that excludes Iraq funding or contains a timetable for withdrawal. "There should be no difference of opinion about whether our commanders on the ground ought to be those who decide or those who recommend to the president and the Congress the best way to proceed," Bush said during a speech in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

    However, like it or not, the Iraq funding amendment stands to face strong opposition when it goes to the House. In October, 92 Congress members signed a letter promising to refuse to fund the war without implementing redeployment guidelines. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is still committed to voting against Iraq funding, according to her spokesman.

    Should opposition in the House prevent full passage of the omnibus by Friday, Bush suggests Congress pass a yearlong continuing resolution, meaning the entire government - including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - would be funded at 2007 levels.

    "If they can't get the job done, like I'm hopeful they will, then all they got to do is just take what's called a continuing resolution, get the people's business done that way and go on home," Bush said. "They got to make sure they fund the troops, though, on the way out of town."

    Leaver predicts, however it happens, Congress will indeed fund the troops on their way out, repeating May's pattern of ultimate defeat on the part of antiwar Democrats. It's possible, he said, that progressives will achieve withdrawal goals in the next war supplemental, which is expected in the spring. But it may be a few more months before real changes begin to occur.

    "For awhile, we might see this same pattern repeating," he said. "But in '06 we saw a lot of seats changing hands because people were upset with Iraq War. When we get closer to election time, perhaps we'll see some more meaningful changes in policy."

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