WASHINGTON — Setting in motion a promised showdown with the White House, Democratic congressional leaders united Monday behind an emergency war spending measure that requires the president to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq no later than this fall.
The $124-billion compromise, which does not include a firm deadline for President Bush to complete a troop withdrawal, is headed for a certain veto.
But as Congress and the White House face off over the course of U.S. policy in Iraq, the agreement marked the prologue for a week that could produce the most serious legislative challenge to a wartime president since the Vietnam era.
The House and Senate, with the support of most Democrats, are expected to approve the measure by Thursday.
Bush, who has used his veto just once, to block an expansion of federal support for embryonic stem cell research, is expected to invoke that power again.
Democrats can't muster enough votes to override a veto. But they said they would keep up the pressure on Bush to end the U.S. combat role in the 4-year-old war, and hinted that they would send the president a funding bill without timelines for pulling out troops.
"We may not be able to prevent President Bush from vetoing our supplemental bill, but we can and will keep trying to change his mind," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said in a speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.
Reid contrasted the Democratic proposal with what he called Bush's "mistakes and mismanagement."
"No more will Congress turn a blind eye to the Bush administration's incompetence and dishonesty," said Reid, who in recent months has become one of Congress' sharpest critics of the war.
Bush argues that setting dates for bringing troops home would allow America's enemies to wait out U.S. forces.
"Politicians in Washington shouldn't be telling generals how to do their job," Bush said after meeting at the White House with Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq.
Petraeus, a highly respected combat veteran who has become the president's best salesman for the troop buildup, will brief lawmakers this week about the progress of Bush's plan.
"I will strongly reject an artificial timetable," Bush said, reiterating a promise he has made with increasing frequency as the confrontation between the two branches of government has intensified.
