Monday, May 28, 2007 | 6:07 a.m.
WASHINGTON - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid knew shortly after President Bush in early May vetoed the Iraq war spending bill with its timelines for troop withdrawals that Congress would arrive at the compromise it faced last week.
Bush made it clear that he would reject any further attempts to set what Republicans call a surrender date, and after weeks of negotiations with the White House, Democrats could not get Bush to budge.
The tense standoff ended Thursday with Congress agreeing to give Bush the $98 billion he needs to fund the war through September without a withdrawal deadline in sight - a compromise that has infuriated anti-war activists, who are launching ads against Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike who backed the deal.
Even though Democrats were unable to reach their goal of setting a deadline to pull out troops, Reid stressed that for the first time Republicans agreed to put limits on the president's authority by establishing benchmarks for the Iraqi government.
Bush himself shifted his position by accepting the benchmarks and saying hours before Thursday's vote he would consider the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, after having previously given a cool reception to the report's call for redirecting troops.
"For heaven's sake, look where we have come," Reid told reporters this week. "We have come a long, long way."
In many ways, the stage for last week's vote was set long ago, when the Democratic-controlled Congress promised that the troops would get the money they needed and Reid's slim majority in the Senate couldn't force the White House to back down.
Without enough votes to override a veto and time ticking on delivering funds, Bush retained the upper hand and could simply wait out Democrats.
Democrats are in a difficult position because while opinion polls show Americans want the war to be over, they also show that the public will not support cutting off troop funds.
That conflicting message essentially prods Congress to act, but deprives it of the one tool it has to directly halt the president's policy.
Democrats could have tried to pressure Bush with another withdrawal bill to veto, but the Senate passed the first withdrawal bill with just a few votes to spare. Reid has a slim 50-49 majority in the Senate, while House Democrats have a greater margin.
With the Memorial Day recess looming, lawmakers were reluctant to face voters at home without having funded the troops. And to act, it became clear that the withdrawal language would have to go.
"They knew several weeks ago," one Democratic leadership aide said.
As Reid reluctantly cast his vote late Thursday , he acknowledged that his only hope for ending the war lies in turning Republicans to his side, as some believe he has started to do - or waiting for a new president.
"Until more Republicans develop the courage to step forward and insist that the president change course in Iraq, Republican intransigence has left us with no good options," Reid said from the floor.
As much as Democrats are getting assaulted by anti-war activists who say the party caved in to the administration after voters put them in power in the midterm election to end the war, Republicans also have been bruised by the deal.
Eli Pariser, the executive director of Moveon.org, put lawmakers on notice shortly after the House vote that the group expects "great political fallout for all of the representatives - Republican and Democrat - who stood in the way."
Playing off Reid's reference to the compromise as weak tea, the group has called on Nevadans to send tea bags to the senator to register their displeasure.
Meanwhile, Republicans, in standing with Bush, risk aligning themselves with an increasingly unpopular war that Americans want over.
Republicans have made no secret about their unrest as Democrats plan to bring one Iraq bill after another to the floor for votes.
Reid has promised that when Congress returns a proposal to begin drawing down troops in 120 days will be up for debate on a Defense Authorization bill. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has vowed as much in her chamber.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell expressed frustration about such tactics after Thursday's vote.
"If all funding bills are going to be this partisan and contentious, it will be a very long year," McConnell said.
Political analyst Jennifer Duffy at the Cook Political Report said Democrats risk having spent months on Iraq at the expense of their domestic agenda while Republicans are seen as backing an unpopular president and war.
"I think there are enough votes on this issue that hurt both sides," she said.
As he left the Capitol after the vote, Reid acknowledged that he saw the compromise coming after Bush's May 1 veto.
"The first day or so, I thought we could get the president to take something," Reid said as he walked to his car.
Pelosi, too, said she viewed the vote as "an inevitable sequence of events."
"This is not a surprise to anybody it would come to this," Pelosi said after the vote.
But both say last week's vote was hardly the last word in the Iraq debate.
Even before the bill passed, Reid told reporters: "We're going to start where we left off."
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