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Senators Call for Bipartisan Iraq Consulting Group

December 08, 2006 2:10 PM

ABC News' Z. Byron Wolf reports: Leaders of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Reform Committee held a press conference to float the idea that committee leaders from both parties with a hand in Iraq policy should be meeting. And on a regular basis.

Connecticut Independent Democrat Joe Lieberman suggests this body be called the "Senate Bipartisan Iraq Consultative Group" (though technically, since Lieberman is an Independent Democrat, perhaps it should be "tripartisan.") The group would not have a staff or funding or "the ability to enact legislation", but "it will inform the existing committee process... providing much-needed dialogue and trust between both sides of the aisle and both ends of Pennsylvania avenue." The aim of the group would be to elevate the formulation of Iraq policy above the "dueling partisan press conferences" Lieberman says are standard now.

You might be thinking to yourself that this is a no-brainer -- that members of Congress would automatically be talking privately between parties and committees about Iraq policy. Not so, says Lieberman and Maine Republican Susan Collins, who said that leaders from the Defense, Intelligence, Foreign Relations, Government Reform and Appropriations committees, "we've never gotten together before to talk together in a bipartisan way about what we should do." Collins said lawmakers need to "put the elections behind us and work on the issues."

Lieberman argued that if lawmakers learn anything from the midterm elections, in which Republicans lost power of both houses of Congress (and Lieberman lost his Democratic party to an anti-war candidate, forcing his current Independence), it is that Americans want their government to work together in a constructive, bipartisan way. But Lieberman's ideas about Iraq track largely with those of President Bush. Many Democrats, to the contrary, have argued that the election was more a refutation of current Iraq policy.

December 8, 2006 | Permalink | User Comments (0)

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