Poll Center: Should Congress Cut Off War Funds?

| Print Post This | Like (0) | Comments (1)

FOLLOWING PRESIDENT BUSH'S nationwide address on Wednesday detailing his administration's new military strategy for the Iraq war, reaction, much of it negative, came flooding in from all sides — from Republicans and Democrats. First, polling data shows a majority of Americans are against the president's plan to add more than 20,000 troops to the current force already in Iraq. Then came the reaction from Capitol Hill on Thursday, where Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice faced tough, if not hostile, questioning during various House and Senate hearings, as The Post's Michael Abramowitz and Jonathan Weisman write this morning.

With Democrats now in control on Capitol Hill, there is one huge, potentially explosive question the party faces: Should Congress use its appropriation powers to block funding for the war, a tactic used to end the Vietnam War? There is not consensus within the party. And that has some pushing the idea. In the Senate, Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold, pictured at right, told the AP that it's "the only teeth we have," though he didn't know how those teeth should be used specifically. With Iraq, one thing was clear: It is "[q]uite possibly the greatest foreign policy mistake in the history of our nation," Feingold said during yesterday's tense Senate Foreign Relations Committee where Rice faced strong bipartisan criticism, as detailed in a Washington Sketch by The Post's Dana Milbank.

From a Feingold op-ed that ran in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel on Wednesday:

Conditions in Iraq are deteriorating, the strain on our military is increasing and the threats we face to our national security elsewhere in the world continue to grow. We can't afford to wait any longer. Congress must use its main power — the power of the purse — to put an end to our involvement in the war in Iraq.

For today's Poll Center question, we ask: Should Democrats block funding to stop the troop "surge"? Go vote (and comment) here and see how your fellow commuters voted, station by station, line by line.

» "Poll: Most Americans Opposed to Bush's Iraq Plan" [WaPo]
» "Bush's Iraq Plan Meets Skepticism on Capitol Hill" [WaPo]
» "Feingold Calls for Cutting Funds to End U.S. Involvement in Iraq" [AP via Mercury News]
» "Rice, a Uniter of the Divided" [Washington Sketch/WaPo]
» "Use the Power of the Purse" [Milwaukee J-S]

Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images