Can Nancy pull it off?

Josephine Hearn reports this morning that the honeymoon is over for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi:

The California Democrat faces the first knock-down, drag-out legislative battle of her short tenure as speaker as early as Friday, when she and her leadership team move to push through a closely divided House a $124 billion emergency wartime spending bill. And on the eve of what has been building for weeks as an epic congressional showdown over the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq, she still lacked the votes for victory.

Nearly all Republicans were expected to side with President Bush and oppose the bill, charging that its collection of military readiness conditions, Iraqi benchmarks and waivers amounts to “micromanagement” of the war. And the Republicans may attract the sympathies of a few conservative Democrats.

From the other side, at least a dozen liberal Democrats are attacking the measure for not doing enough to force an end to the war, despite the bill’s Aug. 31, 2008, deadline for U.S. withdrawal.

That collection of complaints presents Pelosi with a daunting political calculus. She must persuade at least 218 of the 233 House Democrats to support the legislation, even though many have strong misgivings. It’s a risky balancing act that, as of Wednesday, was proving very difficult for Pelosi to pull off, one of her top deputies conceded.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), the Democratic Caucus chairman, said that party leaders still did not have enough votes to pass the measure, but he was confident they would when the bill reaches the floor.

If Pelosi fails to muster the votes, she risks handing the minority Republicans a major victory and suffering a defeat with personal and political reverberations.

Pelosi remains confidant she will prevail. Democratic leaders “are working extremely hard to unify the caucus and pass this bill,” said Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly. “We are clearly gaining momentum every day this week.”

La Pelosi and Co. have been so desperate to have this bill pass that they’ve loaded it with pork in a last minute effort to get several anti-war Representatives to vote for it:

With the House poised to vote as early as today on a $124.1 billion budget bill that would end U.S. involvement in Iraq next year, you’d think House leaders would let such a critical decision ride strictly on its merits.

But Democrats are having trouble rounding up votes for the measure. So the leaders are trying to buy votes the old-fashioned way — by luring wavering members with billions of dollars for parochial projects.

These range from providing “risk mitigation” at Mississippi’s Stennis Space Center to storage fees for peanut farmers in Georgia.

It’s hard to say which is worse: leaders offering peanuts for a vote of this magnitude, or members allowing their votes to be bought for peanuts. These provisions demean a bill that, if enacted, would affect the lives of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the balance of power in the Middle East and America’s long-term security.

The provisions also violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the new majority’s promise to cut back on “earmarks” — provisions slipped into bills that direct your tax dollars to a specific locale or politically favored project.

Last January, as soon as Democrats took control of Congress, the House passed new rules designed to curb earmarks, which had exploded under years of Republican rule. Yet here they go again, just 10 weeks later, including an assortment of dubious expenditures in “emergency” legislation to finance the war in Iraq and the wider war on terror:

*$25 million for spinach growers to recoup losses suffered when contaminated spinach sickened nearly 200 people and resulted in three deaths last year. (Instead of rewarding growers, the government would do better to direct money at safety measures to prevent future contamination.)

*$252 million for a government milk program beneficial to dairy farmers, inserted in the bill by Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., chairman of the Appropriations Committee, which wrote the bill.

*$1.5 billion in livestock assistance for producers affected by wildfires or blizzards.

*$500 million to fight wildfires in drought-stricken states if current funds run out.

Top Democrats, including Majority Leader Steny Hoyer in the space below, argue that the measure includes no earmarks and that provisions unrelated to the war are aimed at emergencies.

A spinach emergency? A peanut storage emergency?

Please.

Heh. Desperate people oftentimes use desperate measures to get what they want. It appears some folks in the House will only “support the troops” if their state benefits directly via pork. Sad. ‘Twill be interesting to see how the vote goes down on the bill.

On the issue of Iraq, find out the latest news on the surge by listening to Glenn and Helen Reynolds’ satellite phone interview with the one and only Michael Yon. Also, check out related news on Iraq (plus a scary moment for the new UN sec. general) here (scroll) – it’s a mixed bag, but I remain optimistic.

Update: See also AJ Strata’s blog here and here for more on progress being made in Iraq.

And here are some related thoughts from Tom Maguire on the Democratic House’s “dilemma.”