Roll Call is reporting that the so-called "Blue Dog" Democrats, a group of fiscally concerned Democrats in the House, have reached a deal with House leadership to advance a pork-laden Defense supplemental bill.

In a move that reflects GOP frustration with the way Democrats have crafted the war spending bill behind closed doors, House Appropriations Committee ranking member Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) on Tuesday introduced a clean war spending bill.

 

"The Democrat leadership of the House has chosen to reward the service and patience of our men and women in uniform by loading up their funding legislation with unrelated spending and inappropriate war policy provisions," Lewis said.

 

"Contrary to the Democrat supplemental legislation, my bill will provide our troops with the resources they need — without expensive add-ons designed to sway votes and provide political cover for anti-war Democrats."

 

Lewis' bill simply provides $178 billion for the Defense and State departments to conduct operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for the remainder of fiscal 2008 and into fiscal 2009.

The liberal House leadership has been conducting business on this supplemental in secret, behind closed-doors, bypassing traditional committee hearings in order to load the legislation with unrelated spending.  Our troops, not to mention American taxpayers, deserve clean funding legislation that is free of costly, unrelated programs.

Meanwhile, the President sounded the alarm about a sudden withdrawal from Iraq, a scenario many liberals have called for, according to Politico.

President Bush warned in an interview Tuesday that the Democratic presidential candidates' plans to withdraw abruptly from Iraq could "eventually lead to another attack on the United States" and would "embolden" terrorists.

In a White House interview with Politico and Yahoo News — a president's first for an online audience — Bush said his doomsday scenario for a premature withdrawal “of course is that extremists throughout the Middle East would be emboldened, which would eventually lead to another attack on the United States."

Time and again, we have seen al Qaeda's presence in Iraq.  Leaving the nation and the gains we have made behind would leave behind a haven for terrorists.