By Richard G. Thomas
Thomas Voting Reports

(Editor’s Note: This story was released Feb. 12, 2008, for publication by our newspaper subscribers.)

After four years of conducting almost no votes on U.S. military involvement in Iraq, the House in 2007 unleashed a wave of roll calls on the future course of America’s most intractable and domestically divisive armed conflict since at least Vietnam.

Two of those votes are featured in this report on 40 of the top congressional votes from 2007. The report also spotlights issues such as U.S. policy toward Iran, new taxes, energy and farm policies, Guantanamo Bay, immigration, Medicare drug prices, abortion, children’s health insurance, food and drug safety, global warming, the minimum wage, contraceptives, government surveillance and Iraq-related votes in the Senate.

Newly controlled by Democrats, the House in 2007 voted 15 times directly on the administration’s conduct of the war, compared to only four House votes on Iraq in the entire 46 months between the March 19, 2003, invasion and the end of the 2006 session, a period of unbroken Republican control.

"The days of the rubber-stamp Congress are now over,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., soon after Democrats took charge of the House in January 2007. “This Congress will no longer serve as the mouthpiece for the White House. This Congress is finally standing up to do its job as a separate and co-equal branch of government"

But when the Democratic majority voted April 25 to require troop withdrawals to start within months, Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., saw not independence but weakness. He said “al Qaeda will view this as a day that the House…threw in the towel, waved the white flag and signaled retreat and surrender in Iraq.”

With the Senate also changing in 2007 to Democratic control and conducting many more war votes than before, the conflict in Iraq showed potential for challenging Vietnam as the most voted-on war in U.S. history. The two chambers combined for more than 50 Iraq-related votes on everything from setting pullout dates to limiting tours of duty to lifting the ban on news pictures of returning coffins.

The Vietnam War drew scores of congressional votes between the Senate’s passage of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution Aug. 7, 1964, and the fall of Saigon April 30, 1975, but never as many as 50 in a single year.

But quantity did not translate into the fundamental change many Democrats vowed in their 2006 campaigns. The House voted multiple times to require troop withdrawals, but saw these mandates blocked by filibusters in the Senate, where rules permit as few as 41 of the 100 senators to effectively kill most pending measures. Even with defections, the 49-member Senate GOP caucus was able to easily turn back every House-passed attempt to scale back or end the war.

During a July 17 debate, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, gave this rationale for the GOP blocking tactics:

“The question is, are we going to bring our troops home at a time and in such a manner as it increases the likelihood that Iraq will descend into a failed state with, of course, the opportunity for al-Qaida to regroup, to recruit, to train, and then export further terrorist attacks to the United States?”

House and Senate Democrats did shepherd several lesser changes into law. Some drew considerable GOP support, such as increased funding for body and vehicle armor, required audits of war progress, sweeping upgrades in the treatment of wounded veterans and a ban on funding permanent U.S. bases in Iraq. But even the rare sighting of bipartisan, bicameral agreement on Capitol Hill was not always sufficient to bring the White House on board.

President Bush repudiated the bases ban, which had garnered support from 227 House Democrats and 172 Republicans. He declared in a defense-budget “signing statement” that it “could inhibit the president's ability” to function as commander in chief. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., responded that “Congress has a right to expect that the administration will faithfully implement” all provisions of the defense law, “not just the ones the president happens to agree with.”

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Copyright, Thomas Voting Reports, Inc.