House defeats bill for more war funding

From the boston globe:

The Democratic-led House yesterday rejected more funds to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; many Republicans angry over the majority party's tactics sat out the vote. It did approve more money for the jobless and an expansion of GI education benefits.
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In a rapid series of votes on the war-funding bill and accompanying components, Republicans withheld their votes in protest, leading to the defeat of the Iraq-funding legislation by a 149-to-141 tally. Nearly two-thirds of the House's Democrats voted against continuing to fund the war.[snip]

A total of 132 Republicans withheld their votes for the troops-funding bill in protest, saying the strategy by Democrats to load the war-funding measure with unrelated provisions would unnecessarily delay getting funding to service members in the field.

"We're playing political games on the backs of our troops - you know it," said the House minority leader, John Boehner, Republican of Ohio. "All this bill's going to do is delay the process for weeks and weeks and weeks while we play political games."

Don't worry this will be temporary it will be back and the troops will be funded. I cannot believe the dems will want to be hit with not providing for the troops. However...

A total of 132 Republicans withheld their votes for the troops-funding bill in protest, saying the strategy by Democrats to load the war-funding measure with unrelated provisions would unnecessarily delay getting funding to service members in the field.

"We're playing political games on the backs of our troops - you know it," said the House minority leader, John Boehner, Republican of Ohio. "All this bill's going to do is delay the process for weeks and weeks and weeks while we play political games."

The politics behind this is to remove the Iraq war issue from the discourse in the general election. However on a positive note...

Thirty-two Republicans joined with Democrats on a 256-to-166 vote to sharply boost education benefits for Iraq-Afghanistan veterans under the GI Bill, despite an accompanying tax surcharge on the wealthy and small businesses, and voted to provide a 13-week extension of unemployment benefits.[snip]

The White House weighed in again yesterday with a promise to veto the bill over the rejection of war spending, the new tax surcharge, and restrictions on President Bush's ability to conduct the war in Iraq.