Last week, the House leadership prevailed on many progressive Democrats to vote for the war supplemental, paying for military escalation in Afghanistan with no exit strategy, giving $108 billion to the International Monetary Fund without requiring modest reforms such as requiring the IMF to publish minutes of its board meetings (as the Federal Reserve does.)
The leadership obtained this consent, in part, by making the vote a loyalty test. Does the loyalty run the other way?
Today the Rules Committee is scheduled to consider amendments to the FY2010 Defense Authorization. The Rules Committee, which largely defers to the House leadership, will determine if progressive amendments will see the light of day.
Amendment #2, offered by Reps. McGovern, Jones, and Pingree,
Would require the Defense Secretary to report to Congress, not later than December 31, 2009, on a U.S. exit strategy for U.S. military forces in Afghanistan participating in Operation Enduring Freedom.
As a freestanding bill, McGovern’s amendment has 90 sponsors. President Obama himself said in March that the U.S. must have an exit strategy. McGovern’s amendment simply says that the Pentagon has to tell Congress what the exit strategy is. Will the leadership allow McGovern’s amendment to come to a vote?
McGovern’s amendment is key to getting the honest debate over U.S. policy in Afghanistan that we have been so far denied. If the Pentagon is planning to stay in Afghanistan until the year 2020, that policy should be subject to public debate.
As MoveOn told its supporters in an email Friday, urging them to contact Congress in support of the McGovern bill,
An open-ended commitment in Afghanistan would be incredibly dangerous for our country and for the world.
Who has the greatest power over whether Members of the House will be allowed to vote on the McGovern bill?
Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House.
You can ask your own Representative to weigh in here.