Senate Democrats Ready Resolution on ‘Surge’

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Senate Democrats will introduce their Iraq “surge” resolution as soon as today, as Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) moves to increase the pressure on President Bush to make dramatic changes to his war policy, a Democratic leadership aide said Tuesday.

At the same time, Reid’s “war room” has launched the Iraq Accountability Project, designed to publicize Democratic oversight activities of the Bush administration’s prosecution of the war.

Although details of the resolution were still being worked out at press time, the leadership aide said it would be a “vote on whether or not [members] support the president’s plan” to boost troop levels by more than 21,000 in Iraq. It does not appear likely, however, that it will include language condemning the approach or explicitly disavowing a surge. Rather the resolution appears to be focused more on putting Members on record as to whether they support Bush.

Aides said Reid is attempting to carefully craft the resolution to appeal to as many Republicans as possible in the hopes of piecing together a truly bipartisan coalition. As a result, the language of the resolution will remain as neutral as possible to allow Republicans to feel comfortable casting their votes with Democrats on such a high-profile issue.

Additionally, while there has been talk in Democratic circles of holding a vote on the resolution the day of Bush’s State of the Union address, a Reid aide said it was unlikely that would occur, since it likely would provoke claims of partisanship.

A number of Republicans, including Sens. Norm Coleman (Minn.), Gordon Smith (Ore.) and presidential hopeful Sam Brownback (Kan.), already have come out against the plan, while other members of the GOP — notably Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, who also has presidential ambitions — have been critical of the surge notion and Bush’s handling of the war.

Last week Reid told reporters that he believed he would have at least 12 Republican supporters and predicted that he easily would make the 60-vote threshold needed to beat back any attempt to filibuster the resolution by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

According to aides familiar with the Iraq Accountability Project, it is part of Democrats’ broader public relations push to further strengthen public opinion against the White House’s handling of the war as well as heighten the profile of Congressional oversight activities.

As part of the project, the war room will release a weekly schedule of Senate committee hearings focused on various aspects of the war, ranging from contractor abuses to emerging terrorist threats and appropriations requests. This week the Senate Judiciary Committee is holding hearings on “the plight of Iraqi Refugees,” while the Foreign Relations Committee is holding a series of hearings on the “remaining options” for dealing with Iraq, according to a release from the war room.

At the end of each week, the war room will release “highlights of important hearing testimony, summaries of the latest news out of Iraq and a compilation of key themes emerging from hearings across multiple committees,” according to a Reid aide.

Reid appears to be modeling the Iraq Accountability Project on his successful opposition to the White House’s Social Security reform plan in 2005. At the time, Reid used a series of well-publicized Democratic Policy Committee hearings on Social Security, floor speeches by traditionally high-profile Members such as Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and “red state” lawmakers including Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.), and public events to vilify the plan and build an early tide of public opposition to it.