Within a few short hours today, our blog this morning, Mixed Signals on Short-Term War Funding Idea was overtaken by events. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) until very recently publicly opposed a short-term approach to Iraq war funding. The Murtha/Obey plan calls for providing $43 billion, or half of the president's funding request, without the soldier withdrawal timetables or domestic funding in Supp. 1.0 -- but only through July.

Last month, we reported in Supplemental 2.0 -- Short-Term War Funding? on a legislative strategy proposed by Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), seconded by House Appropriations chair David Obey (D-WI), to approve funding for soldiers only through July, but without any deployment timetables or restrictions in Supp. 1.0. We noted the White House would likely take a dim view of the idea. Indeed it now has; the NYT has WH spokesman Tony Snow saying yesterday that a short-term bill "provides a kind of uncertainty that really is not helpful to commanders."

A May 3 Page One article about negotiations between President Bush and congressional Democrats over a war spending bill said the Democrats offered the first major concession by dropping their demand that the bill it include a deadline to bring troops home from Iraq. While Democrats are no longer pushing a firm date for troop withdrawals, party leaders did not specifically make that concession during a Wednesday meeting with Bush at the White House.

An AP story this morning, Democrats not backing down on Iraq, not only flatly contradicts yesterday's Washington Post front-page headline, which drew a blog swat from us. It also details the short-term, "a la carte" approaches now under consideration by various House leaders. Under another a la catre plan, military functions would get funds identified as money for "troops," through Sept. 30. But it would guarantee other funding, generally described as "combat" functions, for only two months and create a mechanism for fencing off funding for those operations beyond mid-July.