A growing number of House Democrats, though, say they believe that time has expired for a symbolic resolution that will have little effect on the White House.  Representative Joe Sestak, Democrat of Pennsylvania, a former three-star admiral who was elected in November, introduced legislation on Thursday calling for American troops to be withdrawn from Iraq by the year’s end. Under his plan, financing for the American forces in Iraq would expire on Dec. 31.  “The nonbinding resolution is a necessary step, but it’s insufficient,” Mr. Sestak said in an interview on Thursday. “But even if it’s a half-measure, I will take any measure that moves us further down that line.”  The discussion in the House, scheduled to last 36 hours, will allow each member to speak for five minutes about Iraq. While Democrats said they would allow Republicans an opportunity to propose an alternative plan, it remained uncertain what kind of latitude Republicans would actually have during the debate.  But Republicans said that, through the course of the debate, they would seek to highlight deep differences among their rivals, whose views range from pulling out troops immediately to cutting financing for new deployments. At the same time, Republicans will ask Democrats why they are taking up a nonbinding resolution instead of actual legislation.  “They are now in the majority,” said Representative Adam H. Putnam of Florida, the chairman of the Republican Conference. “They finally have the opportunity to change policy and they are putting up a sense of the Congress resolution, which is worth about as much as the parchment it’s printed on.”  Still, Mr. Putnam and other party leaders conceded that many Republicans were likely to support the bipartisan resolution, given the growing public dissatisfaction with the war and the administration’s decision to expand the military operation in Iraq.  Yet even Republicans who are troubled by the troop buildup plan may not necessarily join the bipartisan resolution, a point underscored this week in the Senate as Republican leaders and the White House campaigned to encourage members of the president’s party to keep their objections at bay. The White House is employing similar lobbying efforts in the House. At the closed-door Democratic caucus meeting on Thursday, Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York voiced his support for taking stronger steps to bring an end to American involvement in Iraq. The unanimity inside the caucus, he said, could expire after next week if the party does not exercise its authority to begin drawing down the war.  “The president is not going to listen to anything we have to say,” Mr. Nadler said later in an interview. “There’s nothing we can do to stop him unless it’s the real consequence — the power of the purse.”  Representative Carol Shea-Porter, Democrat of New Hampshire, said the stalemate in the Senate had only added to the public’s frustration. But she said she was still likely to support the Democratic approach next week, while hoping for more significant legislation in coming weeks.  “It’s training wheels for the real thing,” Ms. Shea-Porter said of the symbolic resolution. “But it will show us which direction things are going.”  A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Democrats Set House Debate To Rebuke Bush Over Iraq Policy. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Party leaders sought to reassure Democrats that the rebuke was a first step — but not a final one — toward asserting Congressional powers on Iraq.