Will House Dems Oppose a Jobless War Supplemental?

The war supplemental for Afghanistan is expected to come back from the
Senate to the House next week - without any kind of timetable for
military withdrawal from Afghanistan, and without money to save
teachers' jobs attached.

AP reports:

In a take-it-or-leave-it gesture, the Senate voted
Thursday night to reject more than $20 billion in domestic spending
the House had tacked on to its $60 billion bill to fund President
Barack Obama's troop surge in Afghanistan.

[...]

The moves repel a long-shot bid by House Democrats earlier
this month to resurrect their faltering jobs agenda with $10 billion
in grants to school districts to avoid teacher layoffs, $5 billion for
Pell Grants to low-income college students, $1 billion for a summer
jobs program and $700 million to improve security along the
U.S.-Mexico border.

Labor unions had strongly backed the House Democratic effort to attach
money to the supplemental to boost employment and avoid teacher
layoffs. Will these unions now urge House Democrats to vote no on any
jobless war supplemental?

Few expect that the House, in a freestanding vote next week, would
reject the $33 billion request for the Afghanistan war, since until
now there has been a solid block of more than 90% of House Republicans
committed to voting yes on what they would consider a "relatively
clean" war supplemental.

But what is in serious dispute is how many House Democrats will vote
no on a jobless war supplemental. A large Democratic no vote would
send a strong signal to the White House of House Democratic impatience
with a blank checkbook for endless and fruitless war while it is
claimed that there is no money to save jobs at home, at a time of
nearly 10% measured unemployment. A large Democratic no vote would
also send a strong signal of Democratic "no confidence" in the
Pentagon's war plans, increasing pressure on the Administration to
vigorously pursue a political resolution to the conflict and to
establish a timetable for military withdrawal - as desired by the
majority of Americans and three-quarters of
Democrats, according
to a recent CBS poll.

Labor and the majority of House Democrats now have two solid reasons
to support a no vote. First, their efforts to add money to save jobs
at home have been rejected by the Senate - with White House approval.
Second, there is no kind of timetable for military withdrawal embedded
in the legislation - not even the July 2011 beginning of a drawdown
that President Obama promised last year but which General Petraeus is
now doing his
best to undermine.

Sixty percent of House Democrats voted on July 1
to require President Obama to establish a timetable for withdrawal.

And increasingly, labor unions are turning explicitly against the war.

On July 11, the American Federation of Teachers, meeting at their
national convention in Seattle, adopted a
resolution calling for:

"an end to our current open-ended military involvement in
Afghanistan, with a specific timetable for the rapid, orderly
withdrawal of all armed forces and military contractors from
Afghanistan, to begin immediately"

United Auto Workers President Bob King and Rainbow PUSH leader Jesse
Jackson have announced that a march
in Detroit on Aug. 28, the 47th anniversary of King's 1963 march on
Washington, will kick off a campaign to to rebuild the nation's
cities, provide jobs and education, enact a moratorium on
foreclosures, and end the wars in the Middle East [my
emphasis.]

The Pennsylvania,
Wisconsin,
and Vermont
state AFL-CIO labor federations have called for ending the war in
Afghanistan; as have the International
Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), and the United
Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE).

If you oppose the spending of your tax dollars for more war, make your
voice heard. The Friends Committee on National Legislation has established a
toll-free number that connects you to the Capitol switchboard:
1-888-493-5443, which will transfer you to your
Representative's office. If you use this number, it will add to FCNL's
count of how many people called Congress against the war supplemental,
so your call will be tallied in two places.