By Lisa Mascaro

Sun, May 4, 2008 (2 a.m.)

Washington — Even the transportation systems in this town can be venues for political discourse.

Climb into a taxi with a driver tanked up on C-Span Radio and suddenly you’re in a bully pulpit on wheels. Step into a subway station and read billboards about the latest lobbying campaigns for military contracts or health care policy.

Boarding the bus one day last week was like entering a rolling salon.

It started simply enough. Apologies and explanations were being made for a stench that apparently trailed behind an unkempt elderly passenger who had just exited the bus.

These things happen in a city. Not a big deal.

Except that it was to one man.

“We might be losing the war abroad,” the man said politely, “but we’re losing it at home, too. We have to do something for these people.”

The comment didn’t stop there. A political conversation ensued about which presidential candidate would be best to lead the country now, and whether it really was the end of a Republican era in Washington as the Bush presidency comes to a close.

It was a modern version of guns versus butter, and it is everywhere in Washington — and in the next few weeks, it will be repeated on Capitol Hill as Congress considers the next spending bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Last week was the fifth anniversary of President Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech, when the commander-in-chief stood on the deck of the battleship USS Lincoln and declared the major fighting in Iraq over.

Those were only the early days of what we now know has become a battle without an obvious end.

To mark the milestone, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid gave a speech on the Senate floor offering a then-and-now tally of affairs since that “sorry moment:” 139 lives lost then versus 4,058 today; $79 billion spent then versus $526 billion today.

(Reid crossed his own milestone just two weeks earlier: It has been one year since he proclaimed the “war is lost,” a comment that has come to define his position on the war.)

Nevada Republican Sen. John Ensign used the occasion to announce his support for a proposal that would require the Iraqi government to shoulder a greater share of the costs of war.

Ensign is one of 10 senators considering legislation to have Iraq reconstruction funds be given as loans, rather than grants, and to charge the Iraqi government for fuel and other costs incurred by the U.S. military. He authored a similar bill in 2003.

“The time has come to end this blank-check policy,” wrote Ensign and the other senators, some Republican, some Democrat.

Both sides of the aisle are growing uncomfortable with the high cost of the war, estimated at $12 billion a month — or $4,000 a second, as Democrats like to say.

Although few lawmakers in Washington are willing to cut off funds to the troops, or impose a tax to pay the cost of war, the bus ride commentary is not far from their minds. As voters feel the squeeze at home with a faltering economy, the word on the bus is sure to move to the debate in the halls of Congress.