Policy Wonk Heaven

Monday, November 12, 2007

Democrats in US Congress are in spending standoff with Bush

: President Saint George W. Shrub may have got lost a veto conflict last hebdomad on a H2O undertakings bill, but Republican allies in United States Congress are sticking with him in another, larger veto confrontation over authorities spending.

Democrats are struggling to pull up a playbook to complete this year's disbursement measures for Cabinet departments, the most basic occupation of Congress. While the new budget twelvemonth began Oct. 1, Democrats have got completed action on just two measures — support defence and wellness and instruction programs.

Some of the Democrats' early determinations have got got appeared to concede even more than purchase to Bush, while internal divisions within the political party have contributed to the holds in getting measures finished and sent to the White Person House.

On three ballots last week, House and Senate Republicans stood with Shrub to show they will prolong his looming veto of the wellness and instruction disbursement bill, a top Democratic priority.

As Republicans learned so painfully when Democratic President Bill Bill Clinton used veto after veto to beat out them during the 1990s, the veto pen is the ultimate arm in legislative warfare. And its powerfulness is especially cogent in states of affairs like the present, which covers with disbursement measures for federal agency budgets that lawmakers are eager to pass. Today in Americas

Clinton used vetoes to protect domestic programmes for education, wellness attention and social welfare from Republican cuts in the early years of Republican control. Later, when a budget excess appeared, he extracted large disbursement additions for instruction and other domestic programs.

Bush, on the other hand, is using veto menaces to cut back the Democrats' spending, trying to coerce United States Congress to lodge to his budget cap for the one-third of the budget covered by the 12 yearly appropriations bills.

There is plenty of political subtext as well.

Republicans are still steaming from last year's elections, when many of their core protagonists faulted them for losing their manner on disbursement and giving up their right to paint themselves as the political party of financial subject and limited government.

The in progress clang is portion of a program to acquire the Republican Party's financial conservativism "brand" back.

Bush have requested $933 billion (€635 billion) in overall disbursement for the authorities sections and federal agencies for financial 2008, and have vowed to blackball any statute law that passes more, with the exclusion of about $4 billion (€2.7 billion) for veteran soldiers programs.

But Democrats desire to add $23 billion (€15.7 billion) for domestic programs. Old-fashioned dealmaking would have got the battlers split their differences. Instead, Shrub and congressional Republicans are turning the prison guards on Democrats.

"The president have made it very clear that the top line is the top line," House Minority Leader Toilet Boehner, a Republican, said on Friday. "The size of the pie is set. The pieces he's willing to work with them on."

Top lawmakers like House Appropriations Committee President Saint David Obey, a Democrat, look to be taking Shrub at his word. Obey was in the center of the conflicts of the 1990s, helping Bill Clinton infusion grants with veto threats, and he is well aware of Bush's advantages.

"Yes, he used his veto, but Bill Clinton never said he wouldn't negotiate. Bill Clinton never said it was my manner or the highway," Obey said. "The difference is Shrub is saying, 'Take it or go forth it.'"

Some Democrats — and more than than a few Republicans — hope that Shrub will soften. Maybe after Shrub acquires a few vetoes out of his system, he will be ready to negotiate, or so the thought goes.

Some Republicans admit much of Bush's budget is unrealistic — with cuts to wellness research, instruction and popular H2O and sewerage undertakings just for starter motors — and they're almost as eager to see dialogues as Democrats are.

But in a move that left some Congress-watchers scratching their heads, Democrats have got given up much of what purchase they had by sending Shrub the lone disbursement measure he really looks to care about, a $471 billion (€321 billion) budget for the Pentagon. There had been guess they would throw the measurement in modesty to seek to coerce the White Person House to negotiate, but with that measure in hand, Shrub is free to play hardball on the rest.

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EDITOR'S note — Saint Andrew Deems Taylor have covered budget issues in United States Congress since 1997.

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