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by Matthew Hay Brown

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, thrown on the defensive by President Bush’s increasingly dire warnings about the consequences of not funding troops in Iraq, said Monday that the commander-in-chief “is not leveling with the American people.”

“Let me just say this: People know how I feel about his credibility, OK? I've been more explicit on previous occasions,” Reid told reporters at the Capitol. “Let me just say that the president is not leveling with the American people.”

Earlier Monday, Bush returned to a theme he has pounded now for several days: That Congress must send him a war funding bill without the strings that Democrats have sought to attach, or the troops overseas will suffer.

"Unless Congress acts, the Defense Department will soon be required to begin giving layoff notices to about 100,000 civilian employees,” Bush said Monday from the Rose Garden, citing Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other senior Pentagon officials.

“Unless Congress acts, the military task force developing ways to better detect, protect our troops from roadside bombs will run out of money by early next year.

“Unless Congress acts, the Army will run out of operations and maintenance money in February. Unless Congress acts, the Marine Corps will run out of similar funds in March.”

Reid reckons that gives Congress plenty of time.

“His secretary of defense told us, without any degree of wavering, he said, ‘The Army has enough money until the first of March; the Marines have enough money until the middle of March.’ That's what he told us.

“Now, since Secretary Gates told us that, the president's spin machine is going. … But the fact is that we have given the president $460 billion. His own secretary of defense said everything's OK under the timeline that I've told you about. This is all hype from the president.”

Reid said the Senate should address war funding before leaving for Christmas. One alternative, he said, was resurrecting the $50 billion bill passed last month by the House but blocked on a procedural vote by Senate Republicans. That bill would give Bush a quarter of the funding he requested, while requiring that he begin a troop pullout with a goal of a complete withdrawal of combat forces by the end of 2008.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called on the Democrats to produce a bill that Bush will sign.

“We know already from the multiple votes that we've had this year what won't get a presidential signature,” he said. “Any kind of surrender date or any kind of congressional micromanagement of the war, even if it were adequate on the funding side, is not going to get a signature. And we do need to get a signature here.”

With reports of a drop in violence in Iraq, McConnell said, now is the wrong time for Congress to claim a role in military strategy.

“I don't think the president is going to sign a bill that, in effect, substitutes Congress judgment for General Petraeus judgment, as to how to manage the war,” he said. “I think the general has demonstrated in the last six months he knows what he's doing. He's getting results and why would we want to do that at this point?”

Reid allowed that the surge in U.S. forces “could be a part of” the reduction in violence. But he said it still hasn’t accomplished its goals.

“2007 is the deadliest year of the war,” he said. “Violence is as it was two years ago, in the fall of 2007. Political reconciliation remains out of reach. Iraq has failed to meet the benchmarks.

Reid said congressional Democrats would make sure the troops got everything they needed.

“We have given the troops more than the president asked for,” he said. “We've given them armor. We've taken care of veterans, following the Walter Reed scandal … We have given them up-armored vehicles that the president didn't ask for.”