Bush, having declined to veto a single spending measure when Republicans controlled Congress, says he wants to veto just about all of them now. It is perhaps too near the twilight of his presidency to call Bush on this latest hypocrisy -- and anyway, the repetition is tiresome. Better to illuminate the picayune nature of the fight Bush picks.
The dispute is over a total -- spread among all the spending bills -- of $22 billion that Bush himself did not call for. That amounts to about 2 percent of federal spending that is subject to annual appropriations by Congress. How else to put it in perspective? Military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing nearly $10 billion every month.
The president's point isn't to force negotiations over a piddling sum. It's to fake out the public so that it believes Democrats can't perform basic governmental tasks. Having already failed to bring an end to the Iraq crisis -- because the president and his remaining Republican allies on Capitol Hill won't allow it -- Democrats are now to stand accused of botching the budget, too. A second goal is to rally the Republican conservative "base" before next year's elections. A third is more cynical: The pox-on-both-their-houses story line that typically accompanies budget showdowns turns off independent voters.
Still, many Republicans are increasingly isolated from their president. The four spending measures so far passed in the Senate have overwhelming bipartisan support. The tallies: homeland security, 89-4; military construction and veterans, 92-1; state department and foreign operations, 81-12; transportation and housing, 88-7.
The House spending bills also drew bipartisan support, with an average of more than 50 Republican votes, according to an analysis by the Appropriations Committee staff. But generally speaking, there won't be enough Republican votes to override Bush's expected vetoes. Once again, House Republicans will control the outcome, irrespective of their losses last November.
The fakery was best expressed by Bush, who last week gave himself the grade of "A" for "keeping taxes low and being fiscally responsible with the people's money." It so happens that on Bush's watch -- and with Republicans in control of Capitol Hill -- the federal budget swung from an anticipated 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion to an expected deficit of $2.8 trillion. This reversal of fiscal fortune has swelled the debt and driven the annual cost of interest on it to $261 billion in fiscal 2008, more than 10 times the amount that is to be so hotly disputed this fall.
The numbers will not matter because the point is to show that Democrats cannot win for having won. This may be the only strategy Bush sees. But it's no way to run a sewer commission.
article:
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070929/OPINION/709290301/1002/OPINION
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