TRANSCRIPT: Boehner, Bolton, and Portman's Post WH/Congressional Meeting on Iraq Acountability Act

Via email:

MAY 18, 2007

SPEAKERS: REP. JOHN A. BOEHNER, R-OHIO, HOUSE MINORITY LEADER

WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF JOSHUA B. BOLTEN
OMB DIRECTOR ROB PORTMAN
BOEHNER: Our meeting earlier this morning was a great disappointment.

Our colleagues across the aisle continue to insist on having surrender dates in the supplemental spending bill. We continue to believe that the generals on the ground ought to be making decisions about how best to wage the war in Iraq , not Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

We want to continue to work together to try to find some compromise that will fund our troops that are in harm's way before Memorial Day. Time is running short. But I do think that there is, in fact, a way for us to continue to work together to try to resolve these differences.

But we are not -- I know that on my side of the aisle, on the House side, we have the votes to sustain the president's veto for any bill that continues to insist on surrender dates.

Josh?

BOLTEN: Thank you, Mr. Leader.

The conversation this morning was a disappointment. It was certainly courteous and candid, and it was a lively exchange, but it was not the exchange we had hoped for.

Democrats seem to be dug in on precisely the same approach that resulted in the president's veto before that was sustained in the House and I think would have been easily sustained in the Senate as well.

Timelines for withdrawal are just not the right way to go, and that cannot be the basis for funding our troops.

Now, the administration did come in and the Republican leadership came in with a flexible approach, willing to pursue options that involve benchmarks and accountability, a move in position for the administration, and a position that won majority support here in the Senate just a couple of days ago.

We were prepared to negotiate on that kind of language which, I think, gives us a path forward. But a path forward that sets an arbitrary timeline for withdrawal is precisely why the president vetoed the bill before, and won't provide us a good path forward to get the troops the money they did.

QUESTION: Mr. Bolten, the Democrats say that with the timeline, that they offered you a waiver for that, essentially saying if you felt that the timelines were unnecessary or would not be helpful that you could waive them. What's the difference? First of all, did they offer that to you, and why was the waiver not acceptable?

BOLTEN: The Democratic leaders did talk about having timelines for withdrawal that might be waivable. We consider that to be not a significant distinction. 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.

The president is the one who has the authority to act as commander in chief. He needs to be the one making those decisions, recognizing that the Congress does have the power of the purse.

BOLTEN: And a timeline for withdrawal, whether waivable or not, would be a very counterproductive move while General Petraeus is pursuing a plan with troops in the field at this moment that has some prospect for success.

We're saying that General Petraeus's plan should be given an opportunity to succeed, which we agree is what we all want. Setting an arbitrary timeline for withdrawal, whether waivable or not, is
going to undermine the prospects of that success and will not be acceptable to the president.

QUESTION: Well, it sounds like the president's willing to accept the Warner amendment. Is that correct, that you guys are willing to accept the Warner amendment, with a series of reports and...

BOLTEN: We -- yes.

QUESTION: And Mr. Reid the other day called it weak and tepid and not acceptable. So did you really have a reason to think that they would accept that today?

BOLTEN: I -- you know, I think we still have reason to hope that we might be able to come around behind something like what – the Warner amendment that you described, which passed here in the Senate with a bipartisan majority. It's the only proposal in this area of Iraq language that has achieved a bipartisan -- a truly bipartisan majority in either House.

So I think the members have already spoken and said that that's a reasonable basis to go forward. The administration did say -- and I don't want to speak for the Republican leadership, Leader Boehner. But I think Republicans are in most respects united around an approach
that Senator Warner was able to pull together -- again on a bipartisan basis -- that involves using benchmarks on the Iraqis, having accountability for those benchmarks and giving the president the obligation to come back and report to the Congress on how we're doing in putting the Iraqis in the kind of situation where everybody agrees we want them to be.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) the first time that you've met with congressional leaders since the veto.

Were you surprised to see the withdrawal proposal back on the table today, with (OFF-MIKE) benchmarks so far and (OFF-MIKE) and now this was put in front of you? Were you surprised by that proposal, or...

BOLTEN: I'll let the leader speak to it, but I was a little bit surprised.

I know that's the position that the Democrats have taken here, to establish some kind of timeline for withdrawal. So I wasn't at all surprised that they put that on the table to see if possibly that
might be an acceptable place to go.

When we indicated it wasn't, I was a little surprised that Democrat -- that the Democratic leaders, at least so far, seem so dug in on that position. Because it's a position that was -- which the
president vetoed, and which was sustained in both houses, and which just a couple of days ago here in the Senate was I think essentially rejected.

We are prepared to talk about the approach that Senator Warner put on the floor here in the Senate and garnered a bipartisan majority. That, it seems to me, is a reasonable way forward.

BOEHNER: And I can say that I was shocked at how stuck the Democrat leaders were on this withdrawal language, that they wanted these dates with or without waivers, and there was no willingness to move away from it.

Now, it was really interesting that they did put on the table the original Iraq language that the president vetoed that came out of the House. And then they were willing to give up all of the domestic spending -- of excess domestic spending they put in the bill.

Then they came back with another opportunity that says, "Well, we'll give you the same language that came out of -- that the president vetoed, that had the waivers in it, as long as you'll take half of the domestic, excess domestic spending."

What a principled stand to take when we're talking about our men and women in uniform in Iraq taking on the enemy in a war that I think most Americans want to win.

QUESTION: Mr. Bolten, can you delineate for us the issue of non- defense spending? What exactly must come out of the bill -- non- defense spending that the president will support?

Would you also address the issue -- some here feel like the Iraqis have not yet spent the reconstruction aid that we've provided so far, and that that's not truly leverage to make them do anything in the form of consequences.

BOLTEN: Let me ask -- Budget Director Rob Portman is with us. Let me ask him to address the budget questions.

PORTMAN: Well, I would agree with the leader that we were encouraged today that we had a discussion about the spending, and particularly that there was a focus on the unrelated spending; in other words, spending that has nothing to do with the troops, nothing to do with global war on terror, and not an emergency.

So we made some progress today, I think, in that regard.

The administration feels very strongly that this war supplemental ought to be about the troops.

Some of you were covering this debate last year during a Republican Congress when the president set a top line which was his actual request, and we held to that top line.

In this case, we are talking to the Democrat leadership about some of the related-to-the-troops additional spending. In other words, the BRAC funding that they've now proposed, the funding that relates directly to our troops in the field, or our troops as they come home with regard to the Veterans Affairs funding.

So in relation to last year, where we had with Republicans a top line that was exactly our request -- and where we held, incidentally -- this year we are talking about the ability for us to work with the Democrat leadership on some of the funding that is related to our troops and their families.

But we feel very strongly that the funding that is unrelated, that is extraneous, much of which is unjustified -- other items may be appropriate items for the regular appropriations but have no place in an emergency spending bill -- we feel strongly should not be part of this process.

QUESTION: Mr. Bolten, Mr. Bolten, could you tell us please more about what you offered? You said you made some movement, you offered benchmarks with accountability. Can you tell us more about especially what was the accountability part?

BOLTEN: Sure.

Basically we put on the table the Warner amendment that passed over here with bipartisan support. And that amendment would have required the administration to set a set of benchmarks for the performance of the Iraqi government. These are benchmarks that I think a lot of people who are experts in this area recognize are the ones that are essential to the ultimate success of the Iraqi government. And we were prepared to have the president be obligated to report on the progress in meeting those benchmarks.

BOLTEN: And what Senator Warner put in his bill was the prospect of money -- the economic support money that is included in the bill for the Iraqi government being placed in jeopardy if the president is unable to report progress on that.

Beyond that, the Warner amendment also required the president to report back to the Congress, in addition to what's happened in the past, what's the best path forward to ensure we get the progress we need.

It seems to me that provides the accountability that members here in the Congress are looking for for the way that the president is conducting the war, and does not have the defects of setting an
arbitrary timeline for the withdrawal of our troops, and does not have the defects that were contained in the president's bill that was vetoed and sustained.

Thank you all.