Groundswell Needed For EO

Sources on the Hill tell some of us that a critical point has been reached at the White House on whether to issue an Executive Order that would prevent federal agencies from spending funds on 90% of the earmarks in the Omnibus Spending Bill. According to the whispers, the earmarkers on Capitol Hill have begun to lean heavily on the White House to let the matter drop and to keep the earmark funding in place. Every day brings a fresh round of calls from the same lawmakers who porked up the overdue spending bill, “airdropping” almost all of them (against the new rules in Congress) to keep the porkers from accountability.
If CapQ readers want George Bush to issue the Executive Order and hold Congress responsible for violating its own rules while pursuing personal political benefits, they need to let the White House know now how they feel. The EO advocates need to remind Bush that only through dramatic action can the GOP reclaim any momentum on fiscal responsibility. A rescission package would only play into the hands of the same people who larded up the spending bill while delivering it three months late.
You can make a difference. Call 202-456-1111 and politely explain why the President should issue the EO, or e-mail the staff at comments@whitehouse.gov.

Because Oil Companies And Pizza Hut Couldn’t Afford It

I’ve figured out how to get conservatives and liberals together on the issue of pork. All we need to do is show how earmarks put money in the pockets of a progressive bete noir, and if possible, throw in a dash of Congressional cluelessness. That would give us a broad-spectrum motivation to kick some porkers out of the Capitol Hill barbeque.
Bingo! One Representative’s failure to gas up created an earmark to build a gas station:

More than 25 years after he nearly ran out of gas there, Rep. Dave Hobson was finally able to fill up in Wilberforce Thursday at a new Speedway SuperAmerica gas station at U.S. Route 42 and Brush Row Road. …
The development, named the Tawawa/Dave Hobson Plaza at a 1 p.m. ribbon-cutting, is joint project between Speedway SuperAmerica, which has its corporate headquarters in Enon, and the Tawawa Community Business Development Center.
In addition to the 2,500 sq. ft., 24-7 gas station and convenience store, the plaza contains 500 sq. ft. of retail space that is expected to be leased to a pizza parlor or other take-out restaurant. Officials at CSU and at Wilberforce University believe that’s something vitally important in a community with hundreds of college students and no pizza delivery or nearby fast food options.

Hundreds of college students, and no fast-food options anywhere? How did they survive for 147 years? How else could we expect the young men and women of Wilberforce and Central State University to find their path to obesity? Thank goodness the federal government stepped in to provide a much-needed solution!
This comes as no great shock from the Ohio Republican. Although he scores better on the Club for Growth’s 2007 RePork Card than most Democrats, he still only earned a meager 6% for his efforts to fight pork. Anyone who can’t figure out when to refill the tank — before a long drive, let’s say — probably believes that the oil companies need financial assistance in building gas stations almost as much as pizza joints do.
Pork projects like these don’t just waste money; they project federal power and distort markets as well. If an area only has a limited market — hundreds of students rather than tens of thousands — it will likely not generate much investment in fast-food joints or gas stations. However, if the need really exists, and not just for clueless Congressmen who forget to fill the tank when they’re in town, the market and the investment will follow, and it won’t come with the strings attached to federal grants. Washington has no business building gas stations and pizza parlors and using our money to score points with the hometown folks.
Let’s see if our friends on the port side of the blogosphere note this pork paean to “Big Oil” (or SuperAmerica, which really is more Corporate America). Hey, it even features a Republican! Can we all agree that earmarking should get banned altogether now?
UPDATE: Bruce Kesler has more thoughts on this. He also finds a few more pork pulls worthy of his excellent skewering.
UPDATE: Libby’s in! Of course, Libby has been on the case for a while, but it’s good to get the momentum rolling.

IBD: Where There’s A Will, There’s An EO

Investors Business Daily comes to praise George Bush’s will — and demand its use on the earmarks in the omnibus appropriation he signed this week. IBD argues for Bush to issue an executive order defunding the 90% of the 9,000+ earmarks that got airdropped into committee reports:

President Bush has proved his courage on Iraq, on SCHIP, and on refusing to accept a tax hike to fix the AMT. His is the sort of will that could squash pork-barrel earmarks — in the name of the Constitution. …
The Congressional Research Service issued a report last week confirming that earmarks not included in the actual bill but written into accompanying reports — which is most of them — do not have force of law and can therefore be disregarded by the president. …
If the president decided to get tough and issue an executive order instructing all agencies not to be guided by earmarks not actually included in the appropriations legislation, he would have on his side the Presentment Clause in Article 1 of the Constitution, which describes how a bill becomes law.

The editors point out that Bush has an opportunity for bipartisanship in this case; he can make Republicans and Democrats in Congress equally unhappy. Robert Byrd (D-WV) managed to generate his usual level of pork in the omnibus bill, committing $430 million to local projects in his state, including a $2.4 million grant for a retractable roof at a park. Ted Stevens (R-AK) got over $500 million, however, and Thad Cochran (R-MS) earmarked $774 million.
An EO could have long-lasting consequences. “Airdropped” earmarks appear in conference reports so that individual members do not have to take the political risk of voting for them, nor do they have to take responsibility for those they propose. Congress promised to quit airdropping earmarks into bills at the beginning of the 110th Session, but broke that promise. Properly worded, an EO would do what Congress promised by never allowing any conference-report earmark to get spent — until a countervailing EO gets issued. That could conceivably never happen, as Presidents will not be eager to be seen as enablers for pork.
George Bush has little to lose in issuing an EO. He will not likely get a lot of cooperation from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in any case in 2008, so he has no reason to let them off the hook. The Republican Party needs a dramatic step to rebuild its case for fiscal discipline in the next election. There is almost no downside to this step at all.
When can he do it? Technically, he can issue that EO at any time during the year, and any earmarks not yet fulfilled will get eliminated. The most dramatic time to issue the EO will either be on the eve of the Iowa caucuses, or at the State of the Union address in late January. I suspect Bush will choose the latter if he decides to issue the EO. Will Congress applaud that as they applauded when talking about earmark reform in the last SOTU speech? Somehow, I rather doubt it.

Bush Mulling Over The Earmark Question

George Bush will seriously consider the popular request of an executive order banning the funding of non-legislative earmarks by federal agencies, the Wall Street Journal notes in an editorial today. While some question whether the move will actually save any money, and even some Republicans question whether antagonizing Congress will be worth it, the Journal says that the White House can only benefit from such an action:

Most are listed in accompanying Appropriations Committee reports that lack the force of law. The point of this Congressional ruse, in part, is to let Members “air-drop” earmarks at the last minute and thus escape scrutiny by other Members who might try to expose their “Bridges to Nowhere” on the House or Senate floor. Mr. Bush assailed this habit in this year’s State of the Union address, and the Members cheered. So why not force Congress to live up to its applause?
Some in the White House fear that such a move would sour relations with Congress, including GOP leaders who love their earmarks as much as Democrats do. We hear that senior Republicans, especially in the Senate, have told the White House that if Mr. Bush refuses to fund these earmarks, he will be courting retribution. There’s a reason no Members will make this threat in public, however. They know how unpopular earmarking is with the voting public.
Meanwhile, 19 taxpayer groups and individuals have written an open letter to Mr. Bush picking up on our proposal. The letter asks the President to issue “an executive order formally directing all Federal agencies to ignore non-legislative earmarks tucked into committee reports and statements of managers. Such an action is within your Constitutional powers, and would strike a blow for fiscal responsibility now while setting a valuable precedent for the future.”
Congress would be able to rewrite the budget to add earmarks in formal legislative language. But at least then earmarks would be challengeable on the floor. Asked by CNBC’s Larry Kudlow last week about earmarks, GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell replied that, “Well, there certainly have been some bad earmarks in the past. But you’ve got to remember, you can knock out all the earmarks, and it wouldn’t save any money.”

McConnell’s remark points out that the money has still been appropriated, whether earmarked or not. However, agencies have no requirement to spend every single dollar of appropriated funds, whereas they must spend the monies earmarked for the purposes of Congress — at least with earmarks written into the legislation itself. We may save all $7.4 billion, a portion of it, or none at all — but we won’t save any of it without an executive order canceling the Pork Christmas.
Bush has the high road entirely open to him. Congress — both parties included — violated its own rules and broke their own promises in airdropping 90% of the earmarks in the conference report. They can sue to get them restored, but that will put current leadership on the record acknowledging their dishonest approach to porking up the budget. Bush can go to court and point out that Congress themselves delegitimized the process used to generate these earmarks. Would they really want to answer for that?

Will Bush Cancel Congress’ Christmas? (Bumped)

The omnibus spending bill made its way down Pennsylvania Avenue this week, and it could have slid all the way down on the grease it contains from over 9,000 earmarks. In remarks yesterday, George Bush warned that his budget director will look at ways to eliminate wasteful spending, and thanks to Congressional dishonesty, he may have a way to do it:

The White House threatened yesterday to cancel thousands of pet projects that Congress inserted into a massive spending bill before leaving town this week, a move that could provoke a fierce battle with lawmakers in both parties who jealously guard their ability to steer money to favored purposes.
At an end-of-the-year news conference, President Bush chastised Democratic leaders for failing to live up to their campaign promise to curb so-called earmarks and said he has ordered his budget director “to review options for dealing with the wasteful spending in the omnibus bill.” Aides later said those options would include simply disregarding earmarks not included in binding legislative language. …
His sharp message on earmarks, though, stirred consternation on Capitol Hill and anticipation among fiscal conservatives. Calling Congress irresponsible for lumping 11 spending bills into a single, 1,400-page measure nearly three months into the fiscal year, he added, “Another thing that’s not responsible is the number of earmarks that Congress included.” While Congress “made some progress” curbing pet projects, he said that “they have not made enough progress.”
Bush said he asked Jim Nussle, director of the Office of Management and Budget, to draft possible actions to take, but he would not elaborate. One option, aides said, would be to ignore the vast majority of earmarks that are included only in conference reports rather than in the appropriations bill itself. Although traditionally honored, language in such reports is not legally binding.

Congress can blame itself for leaving this loophole, and it stems from their eagerness to airdrop earmarks rather than account for them as promised. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid passed reform rules that supposedly barred earmarks in conference reports. However, 90% of the earmarks in the omnibus bill never entered the legislative language, making a mockery of their claims to reform.
Brian Riedl explains the issue at Heritage:

Most earmarks are not written into the actual appropriations bills that are signed into law. Rather, they are included in conference reports, which are explanatory statements that accompany the legislation to the President’s desk. Because they are not technically part of the bill, the Executive Branch is not legally bound to implement conference reports. The President could simply direct agencies to ignore the earmarks listed in the conference reports. The funds would still be spent, but the agencies would have the discretion to distribute the funds by merit rather than congressional diktat.
It is not clear whether the President has that option this year. The appropriations bills’ texts contain several sections stating that a certain amount of a program’s budget “shall be available for projects and in the amounts specified in the explanatory statement described in section….” This may effectively make many of the earmarks in the conference reportslegally binding. The White House, as well as Members of Congress, should investigate whether that is the case. If they determine the conference reports’ earmarks remain non-binding, then President Bush should issue an Executive Order cancelling all 11,331 earmarks and requiring thatall government grants be distributed by merit or statutory formula.

An executive order, meanwhile, would have the effect that Congress supposedly intended with its rules changes this year. It wouldn’t apply to one budget year, but to all subsequent budgets after its issuance, if Bush desires. An EO would prevent any federal agencies from spending money on conference report earmarks until Bush or his successors rescinded the EO.
That would put Congress and the porkers at a huge disadvantage. Congressional leadership would have to take action to restore earmarks produced in a process they specifically disavowed at the beginning of the session. They would have to argue against Bush taking the same discipline to budgeting that they themselves endorsed. A future President would have to rescind an order to enable unaccountable pork-barrel processes and then stand for election on that record.
Undoubtedly, an executive order to this effect would create a huge schism between the White House and Capitol Hill. Given that the current schism could hardly be wider, this seems like a propitious moment for such an action — and to re-establish some baseline credibility for Republicans on fiscal discipline and ethics. Let’s get the EO and end the pork-barrel Christmas.
UPDATE: The National Taxpayers Union agrees:

Congress has already left town after passing a half-trillion-dollar omnibus appropriations bill, but President Bush can still spare taxpayers from many pork-barrel projects in the legislation, according to the 362,000-member National Taxpayers Union (NTU). Even though Bush is signing the bill, NTU today gave a thumbs-up to the President’s suggestion that he may order federal agencies to ignore some of the 9,000-plus “earmarks” that Congress concocted during the process of enacting the legislation.

I’d say ignore them all, and let Congress pay the price for its dishonest behavior.
UPDATE: Successors, not antecedents, as my good friend Linda Seebach rightfully reminds me.
UPDATE II & BUMP: Porkbusters has a letter that will go to the President, asking for the EO:

On December 20, you stated that you were “instructing the budget director to review options for dealing with the wasteful spending in the omnibus bill.” We applaud you for this leadership, and ask that you follow through by issuing an executive order formally directing all Federal agencies to ignore non-legislative earmarks tucked into committee reports and statements of managers. Such an action is within your Constitutional powers, and would strike a blow for fiscal responsibility now while setting a valuable precedent for the future.
Tell Congress and the American public that the era of earmarks is over, and that the Congressional “favor factory” which mints earmarks is closed. The American taxpayer will applaud such an action, as will the many honest legislators in Congress who are trying to fight the broken and corrupt appropriations machine. We hope that you embrace this opportunity, and thank you for your leadership on this issue.

You can do your part by calling the White House and politely requesting an end to the Earmark Christmas. The numbers are 202-456-2617 and 202-456-2130 (fax).

Bush Gets War Funding, Congress Gets Pork

Voters will have to determine whether the trade is worth it, but the 2008 budget finally passed Congress in an omnibus bill that will make its way down Pennsylvania Avenue on pork grease. The spending bill contains 9,000 earmarks, hundreds of which violated the supposed ethics reforms by getting airdropped in conference. Still, the bill represents at least two stunning victories for the White House and yet another surrender on the war by Democrats:

The Senate last night approved a $555 billion omnibus spending bill to fund the federal government for the rest of the fiscal year, shortly after bowing to President Bush’s demand for $70 billion in unrestricted funds for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Democrats had vowed only weeks ago to withhold any Iraq-specific money unless strict timelines for troop withdrawal were established, but they instead chose, on a 70 to 25 vote, to remove what appeared to be the final obstacle to sending the spending bill to the White House, where Bush has indicated he will sign it. Senators then passed the omnibus bill, 76 to 17.
The House must still approve the revised spending bill, with the unrestricted war funds, but Democrats there concede the measure is likely to pass behind strong Republican support.
Senate leaders also fell short on finding a way to pay for changes to the alternative minimum tax. The chamber had already passed a measure to keep 23 million households, most of them upper-middle-income, from being hit with the AMT next year, but many House Democrats sought to offset the loss of $50 billion to the Treasury from the tax “patch,” and so senior Democrats offered up a series of tax increases to cover the cost.
Republicans and some Democrats held firm against any tax increase, though, and the proposal, with a vote of 48 to 46 in favor, fell far short of the 60 votes needed to pass. The House now appears ready to pass the AMT measure without any offset.

The Democrats will have to hope that their pork will serve as a consolation prize to the anti-war activists that they have now abandoned twice in this session of Congress. After their failure to assume command of the military in June, their base erupted in anger. After all, they had promised to end the war if they got control of Congress, and yet they didn’t take the one action Constitutionally open to them: defunding the war. They couldn’t do it this time with the significant improvement seen since then in Iraq, and therefore the funding battle was a foregone conclusion.
Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi will tell them that they will stop the war next time. Sure they will. Russ Feingold attempted to add an amendment to force a troop withdrawal; it got 24 votes in the Democrat-controlled Senate. The Democratic Senators running for President didn’t bother to show up for the vote.
Pelosi lost on the AMT as well. As late as yesterday, Steny Hoyer attempted to float the notion that the Democrats could still get a tax increase into the omnibus bill. Instead, Reid proved once again that he cannot deliver on the Democratic agenda, meaning that the AMT patch will not get a requisite tax boost elsewhere.
Neither Reid nor Pelosi apparently considered the option of trimming the federal budget to pay for the AMT patch, a cut of less than 2% of the budget. Budget reductions apparently fall outside of Democratic leadership experience.
The omnibus bill has plenty of reasons for a veto — about 9,000 of them — but Bush will sign it as soon as White House counsel vets it. It will probably be the first time anyone actually reads it all the way through; the Democrats dropped this bomb on Monday morning, and since it’s several times larger than the Bible, we can bet no one in Congress has done so. Unfortunately, the last continuing resolution expires on Friday, so Congress will have to pass another on top of this omnibus bill in order to keep the government going over the holiday.
A good trade? Bush got the war funding, and Congress got pork. You decide. In 2008.

As Long As The Axe Has His Name On It

Have the Senate Democrats decided to dump their most egregious porker from his leadership position? The Politico reports this morning that Robert Byrd may get pressured to leave his position as chair of the Appropriations committee, a move that could call into question his ability to function at all in the Senate. Pork has nothing to do with this move:

A group of Senate Democrats has begun quietly exploring ways to replace the venerable Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) as chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, believing he’s no longer physically up to the job, according to Democratic senators and leadership aides familiar with the discussions.
Under one scenario being circulated in Democratic circles, the 90-year-old Byrd would be named “chairman emeritus,” and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) would become “acting chairwoman” for the remainder of the 110th Congress.
Democratic insiders caution, though, that no decision has been made.
But there is broad discontent among committee members over the way Byrd has run the panel this year and the resulting problems in completing work on the fiscal 2008 spending bills, leading some members to privately push for Byrd’s replacement as chairman.

Byrd defiantly told the Senate earlier this year that he had no intention of ending his term in office, despite his physical frailty and obvious issues with mobility. Now, though, he seems less able to keep up with his duties on the committee. The budget battles have overwhelmed him, according to this report, and he may have contributed to them through his inability to effectively run committee meetings.
This comes while the Democrats have reeled all year from a series of losses against the White House, especially on budgetary matters. As The Politico notes in another article, they have not only looked incompetent in their inability to produce spending bills, but they have lost important battles when they have done any work at all:

Democratic policy priorities that liberals hoped would be included in the omnibus spending legislation were also left on the cutting-room floor.
Under a veto threat, Democrats removed the reversal of a long-standing anti-abortion provision, abandoned long-sought provisions that would have loosened travel and trade restrictions on Cuba and deleted a line item demanded by unions that would have required federal contractors to pay union wages in disaster areas like New Orleans.
What remains is a smattering of modest policy advances and spending increases on health care, education and transportation that Democrats are touting as the appropriations bill makes its way to the president.
While Democratic leaders have been forced to make the difficult concessions that will enable Congress to adjourn before Christmas, liberals are starting to snipe away, believing their party caved in too easily to an unpopular president.

In the wake of a humiliating 2007, Democrats will want answers for their failures. Byrd makes a good starting point. Even in the best condition, the Senate’s close split would challenge an Appropriations chair. If Byrd’s performance has declined as badly as the Politico reports, the Democrats obviously need to make a change.
But to whom? And how? Booting Byrd out of his chairmanship will undoubtedly offend his supporters in The Robert Byrd State of West Virginia (recently renamed in an earmark), a state they need in the 2008 election. It would also be an admission that Byrd should have retired before now altogether. The heir apparent, Patty Murray, may be more capable than Byrd, but she’s also the same Senator that extolled Osama bin Laden’s support for education — a poor choice for a spotlight leadership position, especially in an election year.
Byrd should have retired before his last election, and the RBSoWV voters should have sent him back to the Robert Byrd Retirement Home with honor and dignity. The Democrats have to swing the axe to get more out of this critical committee chair; he can only hope that they’re using a Robert Byrd model to do it.

Omnibus Follies

As I have written before, omnibus spending bills give Congress a lot of power to create mischief and hide corruption. These appropriations roll up all spending authorizations into a single spending bill, creating fragile alliances that these days rely more on pork than real consensus on priorities. This approach makes it difficult for the White House to use its veto without shutting down vital portions of the federal government, a type of extortion that usually means that Congress has hidden its own selfish interests in this poison pill.
According to Senator Jim DeMint, today’s omnibus bill is exactly like your father’s:

• Earmarks: Instead of reducing the number of pork projects in the federal budget, the bill drives the number of earmarks up from last year. The bill contains over 8,000 earmarks, bringing the total for 2008 up to over 10,000 earmarks compared to just 2,658 in 2007.
• Spending Gimmicks: Instead of cutting wasteful spending out of the bill to bring its cost down to the President’s level, the bill uses budget tricks and gimmicks to hide at least $14 billion in extra domestic spending.
• Policy Riders: Instead of limiting the package to spending needed to fund government operations, the bill includes unrelated policy items. Many of these riders are backed by special interests, such as organized labor, and could not win passage on their own.

Ten thousand earmarks? Recall that the Democrats promised earmark reform in their 2006 election campaign. Did they intend “reform” to mean that earmarks would quadruple in a year?
As far as the special-interest riders, that’s exactly what omnibus spending brings. Its process lends itself to undisciplined spending, because few who gain their own pork will stop to fight against bad spending in other areas of the bill. Because of the scope of the omnibus legislation, it becomes difficult to veto it without being cast as the villain who wrecked consensus on spending …. even when that consensus consists of a conspiracy of the greased.
This bill deserves several vetoes. Bush may decide to use just the one — and if he does, those who want fiscal discipline and clean government will need to rise in his defense when it comes. If it comes.
UPDATE: The Heritage Foundation is all over this at their new Omnibusting site.

Era Of Open Government Commencing

The long-awaited opening of the federal budget to Internet researchers has arrived. The new website envisioned and enabled by the Coburn-Obama Act in 2006 has officially launched at USAspending.gov, offered by the government and designed by OMB Watch. The Washington Post reports on the creation of the site:

Robert Shea is a Republican insider with a head for business and a yen for federal program performance standards. Gary Bass is a government watchdog with a mean bite who wants openness and knows how to get it.
Official antagonists, political opposites, brought together by a wild, crazy idea: federal budget transparency. Online and searchable. Free for the asking.
Today, the White House budget office officially launches USASpending.gov, a Web site that shows taxpayers where their dollars go and which legislators, contractors and regions get the most.
The site was created by Shea, associate director of the Office of Management and Budget. It was modeled on a site pioneered by Bass, director of OMB Watch, one of the budget office’s harshest nonprofit critics.

Why has this become reality? Pressure from anti-pork activists, clean government interest groups, and critics of government inefficiency resulted in an election-year victory. The timing seems more providential than it did at the time; the election itself produced a lot of reform promises with few real deliveries.
This effectively replaces the FedSpending site run by OMB Watch until now. I cannot tell you how valuable that tool has been to this blogger, and many others besides. The ability to research contract and grant histories with concise, centralized data gives us powerful information for explaining many of the political stories of the day. It strips the darkness from earmarking processes as well as normal legislative efforts that tend to benefit the benefactors of politicians, rather than the national constituency. It may not be fascinating for the ordinary web surfer, but OMB Watch’s site has been an essential tool for bloggers.
Congratulations should go to all of the people and organizations involved in this effort, including OMB Watch and the Sunlight Foundation. Special kudos go to Mark Tapscott, who relentlessly pursued the political effort to open government for most of his career, and continues it to this day.

George Bush, Mr. Relevant

George Bush should send nice Christmas cards to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. The pair have done more for Bush’s reputation that the three Republican-controlled Congresses that preceded the 110th. The Democratic leadership have made George Bush more relevant and more Republican than ever before — and their latest surrender on the budget underscores it:

House Democratic leaders yesterday agreed to meet President Bush’s bottom-line spending limit on a sprawling, half-trillion-dollar domestic spending bill, dropping their demands for as much as $22 billion in additional spending but vowing to shift funds from the president’s priorities to theirs.
The final legislation, still under negotiation, will be shorn of funding for the war in Iraq when it reaches the House floor, possibly on Friday. But Democratic leadership aides concede that the Senate will probably add those funds. A proposal to strip the bill of spending provisions for lawmakers’ home districts was shelved after a bipartisan revolt, but Democrats say the number and size of those earmarks will be scaled back.
When defense spending is added to the total, discretionary spending for fiscal 2008 would reach a tentative total of $936.5 billion, $3.7 billion more than the president’s request, said House Appropriations Committee staff members. All of the additional money would be spent on veterans affairs.
The agreement signaled that congressional Democrats are ready to give in to many of the White House’s demands as they try to finish the session before they break for Christmas — a political victory for the president, who has refused to compromise on the spending measures.

Who’d have thought it? Pelosi and Reid have transformed Bush into a spending hawk. In the first five years of his presidency, Bush could barely find his veto pen. Now, however, freed of the burden of defending a free-spending Republican Congress, Bush has discovered his inner Reagan and decided to fight for budgetary discipline — and the Democrats realize that they can’t beat him.
Even the Republicans left in Congress have awoken to the issue of fiscal discipline and have stopped whining about losing pork while they win the bigger victory. At first, the GOP seemed off-put by Bush’s veto threats, and helped override one on the water-projects bill. Now, however, led by Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, they finally have heard the message of 2006 from discontented conservatives to start acting like small-government Republicans.
The new effort has succeeded in splitting the Democratic majority. More to the point, it has rescued George Bush from lame-duck status and given the Republicans some sorely needed credibility on fiscal responsibility. The budget collapse by the Democrats acknowledges that the spending discipline demanded by Bush and American taxpayers can be achieved, and it makes their earlier insistence on massive spending increases look like Democratic politics as usual. The surrender will infuriate their base, which will not be mollified by explanations of 51 vice 60 in the Senate.
The Democrats swore that they would make Congress ascendant over the White House and render Bush irrelevant. Instead, Bush has become Mr. Relevant, and it’s almost entirely due to the political malpractice of Pelosi and Reid. Perhaps Bush should send them some holiday fruitcake as well.