Top Republicans and Democrats met with White House officials this morning to discuss the stalled Iraq fiscal 2007 war spending bill, but they made no discernible progress toward a deal.

Democrats offered to strip billions of dollars in domestic spending from the emergency appropriations measure and to grant President Bush authority to waive a timeline for a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. Their offer was rejected.

Republicans and the White House essentially embraced language included in an amendment that Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., offered May 16 to an unrelated water resources bill that commanded a 52-44 majority but fell short of the 60 votes necessary to invoke cloture. Warner’s amendment would require the president to produce reports in July and September on the Iraqi government’s progress toward certain benchmarks, and unless he certified that they were moving forward, reconstruction aid would be withheld. But the president could waive that sanction.

Even though a majority of Democrats voted against the Warner benchmark language because they deemed it too weak, Bolten said Republicans hoped that “something like Warner” could become the basis of a compromise, since it obtained “the only truly bipartisan majority of votes” in this week’s Iraq debate in the Senate.