WASHINGTON, May 3 (UPI) -- President Bush's chief of staff was meeting with key U.S. senators Thursday as negotiations on a new Iraq funding bill began in earnest.
White House spokesman Tony Snow said Joshua Bolton was in talks on Capitol Hill with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., a staunch advocate of U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, and also with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
National security adviser Stephen Hadley and budget chief Rob Portman were also to meet with House and Senate legislators following Bush's veto Tuesday of the $124 billion war supplemental bill that contained a troop withdrawal timeline and mandate.
"(Bush) would like this done more quickly. He would like this done as soon as possible," Snow said of a prediction by Democrats that a new measure would be ready by the end of May.
Bush vetoed the earlier measure, which would have provided supplemental funding for military operation in Iraq and Afghanistan for the remainder of fiscal 2007, saying the withdrawal mandate was a prescription for defeat as well as in conflict with a president's wartime powers.
A new bill would be unlikely to contain the withdrawal timeline, since Bush has promised to veto it if it did. Instead, Democrats are looking at achievement benchmarks the Iraqi government would have to meet to receive continued U.S. help.
Such a provision in place of a timetable would, however, roil Democratic ranks, pitting more liberal lawmakers against more moderate ones.
Lack of emergency supplemental funds has already caused the U.S. Army to begin siphoning money from other programs to foot the bill for Iraq operations.
