The home front

The Iraq supplemental appropriation bill last year was, as its name suggested, all about Iraq, at least as far as perceptions went.

Given that the Democrats failed to end the war in Iraq or accelerate American withdrawal, headlines focused mainly on Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), her caucus and the anti-war movement falling short of their goal.

There was much angst that although the Democrats had just won the mid-term elections largely because of rising public opposition to the war, President Bush was still able, fairly easily, to win the battle over funding the troops and determining war policy.

The spotlight on the war meant several significant items attached to the supplemental legislation went largely unnoticed. One was extra money for relief of Hurricane Katrina’s victims. Another was a hike in the minimum wage. Democrats would have been able and eager to trumpet these had they not been so closely associated with failure to deflect Bush on Iraq.

This year’s supplemental, which is likely to come to a vote in the next several weeks, is set in a very different political context. Congress will again vote on appropriating an eleven-figure sum of money for war, but that will not be the focus.

Gen. David Petraeus’s success in using the “surge” to reduce violence in Iraq and check American reverses there means public hostility to the war has abated and higher proportions of voters suggest they believe U.S. efforts there add up to something better than disaster.

So, with the economy widely perceived to be in the tank, domestic rather than foreign policy issues are uppermost in the minds of the public and of politicians on Capitol Hill.

Measures attached to the supplemental this time will be much more heralded than were those of 2007. Already, the second stimulus package wanted by Democrats is more talked about than the supplementary appropriation legislation that will carry it to the president’s desk.

There is nothing, or next to nothing, that the dominant party in Congress can do between now and the next presidency to change policy in Iraq. So it will grit its teeth and vote monies to keep the troops supplied.

But heading into the final election strait in a presidential year during which, in addition, congressional Democrats feel the wind at their backs, it is domestic and specifically economic measures that will be accorded the most attention.

The policy agenda has, so to speak, come home from abroad. Indeed, it has come home to American homes, which are being foreclosed as rarely before.