GOP Leaders To Pelosi: Bring Members Back To Finish Work On Supplemental

Taking cues from the White House, Republican congressional leaders have urged Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to abbreviate this week’s extended Easter recess in the House to finish work on a spending bill to fund the war in Iraq.

Republican leaders sent Pelosi a letter on Monday asking her to trim the two-week recess so negotiators could hammer out a compromise between House and Senate versions of the emergency spending bill. The Senate, meanwhile, resumes its work this week

“The Senate is in session and ready to work,” the leaders wrote. “We respectfully request that you cancel the remainder of your break, call the House back into session, appoint conferees promptly, and work in good faith to pass a clean supplemental funding bill that the President can sign as soon as possible.”

President Bush has promised to veto any war-funding measure that includes a withdrawal date, military benchmarks or the more than $20 billion in non-military spending that Democratic leaders added to both the House and Senate versions of the bill.

These calls to cut the recess short are an effort to accelerate that showdown in an attempt to put more pressure on congressional Democrats. White House officials made similar pleas last week.

“This funding request has been pending since February 5, but your leadership team chose to leave town for more than two weeks rather than completing this bill,” the leaders wrote. “As a result, our troops have been put at risk.”

Republican leaders also criticized Pelosi for not naming House negotiators to craft a compromise spending bill with the Senate before members left town for their two-week break

“Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid [D-Nev.] told the Senate that he hoped the House-Senate conference would begin on March 30,” the leaders wrote. “That hoped-for progress has been thwarted by your failure to act.”

Members of both parties have argued about the window by which Congress must act, with Republicans seizing on claims by top military officials that the Pentagon will need the money by the end of April and Democrats highlighting a Congressional Research Service report that the Army has enough money to fund the war through June.

The letter to Pelosi was signed by nine Republican leaders in both chambers, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio).