WASHINGTON — While Defense Secretary Robert Gates told House members yesterday that troop morale in Iraq won’t be hurt by congressional debate on the war, Senate Democrats — including both of Rhode Island’s — stepped up their call for more debate and for votes on President Bush’s plan to send more troops to Baghdad.

This week’s stalled Senate debate on a series of Iraq-related measures is “a terrible thing for our country and a terrible display to the world,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said at a news conference organized by Senate Democratic leaders to accuse Republicans of obstructing action on a resolution to express opposition to Mr. Bush’s plan. Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire called the charge “absurd.”

As the Senate’s Iraq debate sputtered, the focus turned to the House, where Democrats prepared for votes on the issue next week and Gates continued his defense of Mr. Bush’s new request for war appropriations and his 2008 Pentagon budget blueprint. Gates testified before the House Armed Services Committee with Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Gates told the panel that it should be clear within a matter of months how well the Iraqi government is progressing and whether the United States needs to consider “other alternatives and consequences.” Mr. Bush named Gates to replace longtime Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld after the voters made clear in last fall’s elections their dissatisfaction with the state of affairs in Iraq.

After a variety of authorities weighed in on possible course changes, Mr. Bush settled on a plan that includes what he has called a “surge,” an influx of 21,500 more U.S. troops, principally to help Iraqi troops tame the violence in the capital city of Baghdad.

The decision drew a chorus of opposition from congressional Democrats, including all four members of Rhode Island’s delegation, and some Republicans, including such significant figures as former Senate Armed Services Chairman John W. Warner of Virginia.

Among other notable departures from Rumsfeld’s policies, Mr. Bush has asked for a permanent increase in the size of the Army and the Marines, a step that Sen. Jack Reed, a former Army officer, called for several years ago.

Gates repeated his support for the expanded military yesterday, arguing that it will give troops a longer respite between combat tours and increase the nation’s ability to respond to crisis.

Gates also testified that the United States might be able to reduce the size of its force in Iraq by the end of this year, if the Iraqi government can sufficiently reduce the violence and build political consensus — a prospect that he called “the best case story.”

Distancing himself from some congressional Republicans who oppose official resolutions against the Bush policy, Gates told the House committee that members of the U.S. armed forces are “sophisticated enough to understand” that that argument in Congress is about how best to win the war. The troops “understand how our legislature works and that they understand there is going to be this kind of debate,” said Pace. “There is no doubt in my mind that the dialogue here in Washington strengthens our democracy, period,” he said.

Pace said that as long as Congress pays for the mission in Iraq, “the dialogue will be the dialogue and the troops will feel supported.”

So far, there have been no concerted Democratic efforts to withhold money for the war effort. But this week’s release of the administration’s budget requests has underscored the power that the majority Democrats now hold to scrutinize all sort of defense spending accounts and to try to prod Mr. Bush toward war-policy shifts. One possible target is Mr. Bush’s request for a special, $99.6-billion spending bill to cover the cost of fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the balance of the current fiscal year.

Money to pay for the temporary increase in troop levels in Iraq is part of that sum. The Congress faces a deadline of around mid-April to act on that supplemental request.

On deck before that is next week’s House debate on an array of potential resolutions on the direction of the war. House rules let the majority exert near-total control over the timing and content of floor debates, so there is some prospect for a clear statement of opposition to Mr. Bush’s policy to emerge from the House.

Not so in the Senate, as this week’s events have illustrated. Because of Senate rules permitting unlimited debate, it is difficult to proceed on even routine matters unless at least 60 of 100 senators are willing to vote to shut off debate. After a long buildup, the Iraq debate stalled Monday when the Democrats refused to accept a GOP procedural plan for taking up Republican Warner’s resolution of opposition to Mr. Bush’s plan — which was expected to command a strong bipartisan majority. The Democrats balked because the GOP procedure called for a vote on Republican Gregg’s measure to state opposition to cuts in the spending that supports the troops in the war zone.

Whitehouse responded by devoting his first Senate floor speech to the issue, charging as the debate wound down Tuesday night that the Senate had been “silenced by parliamentary maneuver.” The freshman senator went on to reiterate his view that the “grave and deteriorating” situation in Iraq demands that Mr. Bush announce plans to begin removing troops from Iraq.

He joined other Democrats yesterday in portraying the Republicans as deliberately blocking debate on Mr. Bush’s new Iraq plan at a Democratic news conference that, among others, featured Reed, Whitehouse, and a group of veterans critical of the president’s policy. Reed said that the current debate might be “as important or more important than” the 2002 debate over the resolution authorizing Mr. Bush to invade Iraq. Reed reasoned that this debate is based on “three years of hard lessons and mistakes” by the Bush administration. Reed called the GOP’s procedural techniques “a conscious attempt to once again protect this administration from their own follies.”

Gregg disputed that charge in an interview, calling it “foolish to claim” that Republicans want to block a vote on Warner’s resolution of opposition to Mr. Bush’s new policy.

jmulligan@belo-dc.com