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Politics

Veto ramps up budget strife

Bush dismisses a spending bill, and Democrats vow to block war funds.

By PETER BAKER, Washington Post
Published November 14, 2007

NEW ALBANY, Ind. - A budget dispute erupted into a full-scale battle Tuesday as President Bush vetoed the Democrats' top-priority domestic spending bill and the party's Senate leader threatened to withhold war funding if the president does not agree to pull out of Iraq.

The long-anticipated clash came to a head as Bush rejected a $606-billion bill to fund education, health and labor programs, complaining that it was too expensive and larded with pork. Within hours, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., declared that Bush will not get more money to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year unless he accepts a plan to complete troop withdrawals by the end of next year.

The exchange encapsulated a broader confrontation over national priorities, a battle both sides appear eager to wage heading into an election year. As Bush demands full funding for the war, he signaled that Tuesday's action will be the first of a cascade of vetoes killing other spending bills, casting himself as a deficit hawk blocking a tax-and-spend Congress. The veto was the sixth of his presidency and the first of an appropriations bill.

Democrats are seeking to paint Bush as a reckless leader who spent the nation deep into debt through failed war policies while ignoring schools, medical research and other vital areas.

The spending bill provided millions more than the president wants on job training, medical research, heating subsidies for the poor, grants to community agencies and community health centers and help for K-12 schools to improve performance. After vetoing it, Bush flew to Indiana to lambaste Congress in a speech.

He complained the bill spent nearly $10-billion more than his proposed budget and included more than 2,200 pet projects known as earmarks, such as a prison museum, a sailing school taught aboard a catamaran and a program teaching Portuguese as a second language.

"The majority was elected on a pledge of fiscal responsibility, but so far it's acting like a teenager with a new credit card," he said.

The bill originally passed with sizable Republican support, but short of enough votes to override a veto. Democrats pledged to seek more GOP support and reverse Bush's action.

At the same time, Bush signed a $471-billion annual Defense Department spending bill that increases the Pentagon's budget 9 percent to fund operations other than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush said that although that bill also included unnecessary spending he considered it important to deliver money to the military at a time of war.

FAST FACTS

$3.5-trillion wars?

The total cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could balloon to $3.5-trillion over the next decade because of "hidden" costs such as oil market disruptions, long-term health care for veterans and interest payments on borrowed war funding, according to a report released by congressional Democrats on Tuesday.

The projection, by the Democratic majority on the Joint Economic Committee, is more than $1-trillion higher than a recent forecast by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Senior Republicans on the panel said the report used flawed methodology, had factual errors and should be withdrawn.

[Last modified November 14, 2007, 01:29:50]