Senator Ben Nelson Votes With Panel Republicans to Restore Funding For Vice President’s Office

WASHINGTON — The White House scored a win Thursday on Capitol Hill after a moderate Senate Democrat broke with his party to restore funding for Vice President Dick Cheney’s office.

The 15-14 vote in the Senate Appropriations Committee came after the House last month narrowly rejected a companion bid to punish Cheney in a continuing battle over whether he is complying with national security disclosure rules.

Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., switched his position from a subcommittee vote Tuesday.

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate and the author of a bill funding the White House budget and other agencies, had refused to fund the vice president’s $4.8 million budget, arguing that Cheney’s office is refusing to comply with parts of an executive order governing its handling of classified information.

At issue is a requirement that executive branch offices provide data on how much material they classify and declassify. That information is to be provided to the Information Security Oversight Office at The National Archives.

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Nelson says change Iraq mission now

Sen. Ben Nelson on Wednesday proposed immediate redeployment of U.S. troops within Iraq rather than waiting for a scheduled September progress report from Gen. David Petraeus.

“We should not wait until Sept. 15 to start doing what we need to do,” Nelson said.

Nelson, a moderate Democratic voice in the Senate’s Iraq war debate, said U.S. soldiers should “get out of the business of trying to quell sectarian violence” in Baghdad and focus their efforts on anti-terrorism and border security.

“Redeploy, not withdraw, our troops,” he told his weekly telephone news conference from Washington.

U.S. soldiers should be used to “pursue al-Qaida operatives” rather than be engaged in a civil war, Nelson said. And they should patrol and secure Iraqi borders while training and equipping Iraqi forces.

Nelson said he’ll propose those changes in “a realistically (and) tactically feasible, bipartisan amendment” to the Senate’s defense authorization bill.

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