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White House rejects Democrats' offer on war spending bill
 (Xinhua) -- Democratic leaders in the U.S. Congress offered major concessions on Friday over a war spending bill that would provide money for the Iraq war, but the offers were rejected by the White House. After a close-door meeting with top White House aides on Capital Hill, Democratic leaders said the White House said "no" to everything they proposed. "To say I was disappointed in the meeting is an understatement," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat from Nevada. Democratic leaders offered to strip from a war spending bill billions of U.S. dollars in domestic spending that was opposed by President George W. Bush, if the White House agreed to a withdrawal timetable in the bill. They also offered to give the president authority to waiver compliance with a timetable to pull out U.S. troops out of Iraq. But the offers were declined by the White House, and no agreement emerged. White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten, who rejected the deal at the meeting, said any timetable would send the wrong signal to the enemies of the United States. "Whether waivable or not, timelines send exactly the wrong signal to our adversaries, to our allies and, most importantly, to the troops in the field," he said. Even without agreement with the White House, Democrats said they would try to pass a bill next week to provide funding to U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not rule out the bill would contain a withdrawal timetable. "Nothing is off the table. The one thing that has to be on the table is accountability and this administration has never been willing to be accountable for this war in Iraq," she said. Posted by: Fred 2007-05-19 |
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