Washington, May 16 (Xinhua) The US Senate voted Wednesday to reject a measure that would cut off money for American combat operations in Iraq after March 31, 2008.
The legislation, proposed by Democrats, was rejected by a vote of 67-29, short of the necessary 60 votes to advance under Senate rules.
The proposal was one of the four amendments that the senate was scheduled to vote on Tuesday, with two of them proposed by Democrats and two by Republicans, to gauge support for what steps should be taken for the war, which is now in its fifth year and has taken the lives of over 3,300 US soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis.
A second democratic amendment would give the Bush administration what it has asked for the war but call for withdrawing US troops this year and setting March 31 next year as a goal of completing the pullout.