Some Republicans Take a Scorched-Hill Tack

[question everything]

The Wall Street Journal

Some Republicans Take a Scorched-Hill Tack

Leaving Budget Decisions To Democrats Could Disrupt New Leadership's Agenda
By DAVID ROGERS
December 6, 2006; Page A8

WASHINGTON -- Like a retreating army, Republicans are tearing up railroad track and planting legislative land mines to make it harder for Democrats to govern when they take power in Congress next month.

Already, the Republican leadership has moved to saddle the new Democratic majority with responsibility for resolving $463 billion in spending bills for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. And the departing chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Bill Thomas (R., Calif.), has been demanding that the Democrat-crafted 2008 budget absorb most of the $13 billion in costs incurred from a decision now to protect physician reimbursements under Medicare, the federal health-care program for the elderly and disabled. The unstated goal is to disrupt the Democratic agenda and make it harder for the new majority to meet its promise to reinstitute "pay-as-you-go" budget rules, under which new costs or tax cuts must be offset to protect the deficit from growing.

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But with Mr. Hastert dismantling his office, House Republicans appear to be operating in a post-election leadership vacuum. The White House is watching with alarm, as are many Senate Republicans, who have a greater stake than the House in maintaining relations with Democrats. "There are individuals who want to blow up the tracks, and there are more of those individuals in the House," said one Senate leadership aide. The collapse of the appropriations process will be felt soon in the Justice and Commerce departments, food-safety agencies and veterans' health care. "It's not just a mess. It's a mountainous mess," complained Wisconsin Rep. David Obey, the next House Appropriations Committee chairman.

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With Congress turning off the lights this week, there seems no chance of saving the appropriations process. Instead, most of the government will remain on a stopgap bill through Feb. 15, and in kicking this can down the road, the Republican leadership has no idea where it will stop rolling. "It's a demonstration of the irresponsibility of Republicans that they would leave this country with this mess," said the next House speaker, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.). "But we won, we will deal with it."

Democrats could simply extend the stopgap resolution again in February and set themselves up as a budget appeals court of sorts, to which the administration will have to come for relief. "I think we can work through it, but it is not our preference," said White House budget chief Rob Portman. But the administration admits it could yet pay a price if the spending issues become entangled with President Bush's spring supplemental-spending request for military operations in Iraq.

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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116537033474441872.html (subscription)

[Amonester]

1. May I suggest a "new" slogan:

Bring the boys 'n girls back home now and save one hundred billion!

Or something like that.