Jack Reed appeared on Meet the Press with Press Secretary Tony Snow and Senator Chuck Hagel. Here is an excerpt from the transcript:

MR. RUSSERT: But the president’s going to oppose Congressman Murtha’s attempt to limit funding. Would you support limiting funding for the troops involved in the surge?

SEN. REED: Well, I think the critical issue here is getting the mission right and to fund those, those missions appropriately. The missions that we should concentrate on are going after al-Qaeda, security, building up the Iraqi security forces, maintaining the territorial integrity of Iraq. But conducting an operation in the midst of a civil war in Baghdad is one I don’t think is going to help us in the long run. I think we have to look, as Senator Hagel suggested, about funding. But I think we have to focus most critically on the missions, and guaranteeing to our troops that those missions with—that are in the interest to the United States will be funded.

MR. RUSSERT: But the point is, the president seems to welcome this debate on funding because he believes, as Mr. Snow repeatedly said, overwhelmingly, the American people do not want to withhold funding for the troops on the ground. Would the Democrats be willing to use the purse strings, the power you have, to stop funding the new surge of troops in Iraq?

SEN. REED: I think we’ve begun a process with this, these series of votes. First, clearly, on a bipartisan basis, a majority of the House and the Senate opposes the president’s strategy. That’s a clarion call, I think, for him to change the strategy. Second, we’re sitting down already with Senator Reid and Senator Biden, Senator Dodd, many others, and trying to work out a new approach. I think it begins with refocusing the mission and then resourcing that mission. Down the road, will we consider issues with respect to funding? I think so. But we’ll never compromise the ability of American soldiers to protect themselves. That’s something that I won’t do; that’s something that I believe Chuck won’t do.

What the president is doing is inviting a debate. I think it’s a false debate. The debate is about taking away resources that will protect troops. We won’t do that. But we have to change the strategy for the long term interests of this country, and for, I think, success. Success not measured in the president’s terms, but success in terms of much more stable region in the Middle East.

MR. RUSSERT: Is there a concern that the funding of the troops is a political radioactive issue that could backfire on the Democrats?

SEN. REED: Well, I don’t think it’s a concern that it’s a radioactive issue, but the president is inviting a debate and citing polls. There’s no American, and I don’t think there’s any senator, that’s consciously going to take away equipment, training dollars for American personnel. And again, this is the administration that went into this operation without a good plan for an occupation, went in without sufficient armored humvees, without body armor for troops, without training in counterinsurgency operations, despite the conventional success of that march into Baghdad. This is an administration that has persistently overstressed the Army. Chuck and I, in 2003, made the first proposal to increase the size of the Army. It’s only within several months that the president has embraced the idea of a larger Army. So their attention to the needs of the military, I think could be faulted significantly. And now they want to use the Army and the funding as a sort of political crutch. [full transcript]