Spring break checklist for Congress: A plane ticket back home, chocolate (or matzo) for the family and a war spending bill for the president.

The last item might need to wait.

Senate Democrats beat back Republican efforts Tuesday to strip a key provision of the $122 billion wartime spending package that sets goals for withdrawing troops from Iraq — a significant turnaround from just two weeks ago, when the GOP defeated a similar withdrawal measure. The Republican amendment was defeated, 50 to 48.

The Senate will take a final vote before the Easter recess Thursday but is not expected to reconcile its version with the House bill until both chambers are in session April 16 — one day after the Pentagon says it must get the emergency funding for troop operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in order to avoid cutbacks.

The White House doesn't intend to accept the IOU quietly, accusing the Democratic-controlled Congress of skipping town before its work is done.

There is a good question whether Congress, constitutionally, can forbid the president — even using its spending power — from engaging the declared and active enemies of the United States wherever he can find them. Significantly, the Constitution requires the three branches of government to defend the United States. After all, providing for the common defense was one of its primary stated purposes.

Realizing, perhaps, that it is on thin constitutional ice, Congress appears willing to grant the power for the president to prosecute "counterterrorism" operations in Iraq, even while cutting off the funding for combat missions. Unfortunately for its proponents, this language — whatever its merits as a political gimmick designed to demonstrate Congress' anti-terrorism machismo — makes the problem even worse. It would amount to true congressional micromanagement — telling the president, for example, that he may attack an al-Qaeda training facility in Fallujah, but cannot engage the local militias operating alongside al-Qaeda.

This type of militarily nonsensical splitting-the-difference compromise, of course, is a perfect example of war by committee — and confirms the Framers' wisdom in vesting the power to direct America's armed forces in one individual, the president of the United States.

Gavin said a few days' difference would not impose an extraordinary burden. "The Pentagon has the authority within the law to transfer funds to support military action," he said.