Democrats in Congress appear determined to force a showdown with President Bush this week on the budget, daring him to veto their $520 billion omnibus spending bill with funding for all major federal departments and agencies, plus token funding for U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This has “bad plan” written all over it because it puts Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a losing position eerily similar to that in which then-Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and new House Speaker Newt Gingrich found themselves with Bill Clinton in 1995.
A decade ago, it was a GOP Congress that wanted historic spending reductions and the beginning of a massive reorganization of the federal government to make it leaner and more efficient.
That’s what voters had endorsed in the November 1994 election by throwing out the Democrats who had ruled Congress for four decades. Or so thought Gingrich and others in the GOP’s insurgent class of 1994.
But Clinton out-maneuvered Gingrich and Dole, using a veto, a take-no-prisoners attitude behind the scenes, and adroitly posing in public as just trying to keep those Social Security and Medicare checks flowing to people in need.
Clinton was further boosted when the mainstream media unflatteringly portrayed Gingrich and Dole in petty terms regarding their seating positions on Air Force One as members of the U.S. delegation to the funeral of slain Israeli Prime Minister Yihtzak Rabin.
This time around it’s Democrats in Congress daring a Republican chief executive to veto their bill, which is based on their vision of increased federal spending and higher taxes that they think voters endorsed last November in voting the Republicans out of power.
But like Clinton in 95, Bush made it clear Saturday through Jim Nussle, his Office of Management and Budget Director, that he will veto a “budget-busting bill” that exceeds his recommended spending levels.
That $520 billion omnibus spending bill the Democrats are preparing for Bush certainly qualifies as a budget buster because, according to Nussle, “it would include 18 billion in additional domestic and emergency spending above the President’s budget. When added to emergency domestic spending Congress already included in the Defense appropriations bill, this so-called compromise would result in more excess spending than even the Democrats’ original budget included.”
Yesterday, Reid and Pelosi all but challenged Bush to veto the expected bill, which they said “would fund critical priorities such as border security, homeland security, and putting more police officers on the street.”
That’s the language of somebody who expects a veto and wants to define how its consequences will be viewed. And given the likelihood that the mainstream media will report the aftermath of a Bush veto that way, Reid and Pelosi may succeed in forcing him to blink first.
There are two major differences between 1995 and 2007, however, Iraq and earmarks. Clinton didn’t have a costly war to worry about then. Yet public dissatisfaction with Bush on Iraq certainly contributed to the Democrats return to congressional power this year.
But more recently things have turned around somewhat in Bush’s favor compared to last November thanks to the success of the U.S. military surge. So Reid and Pelosi may be risking their veto gamble on a mis-reading of the public mood on Iraq, just as Gingrich and Dole erred in thinking voters who loved the Contract with America would also support a government shutdown.
Nobody had ever heard of earmarks in 1995, but another major part of the Democrats’ victory in the most recent election was attributable to public disgust with the spending waste and corruption epitomized by the “Bridge to Nowhere.”
Democrats are extremely vulnerable here because their earmark reform promises have been mostly window dressing, a fact which has not been lost on the public that has given historically low approval ratings to Congress lately.
In other words, Bush can win by making good on his threat with what would be the mother of all spending bill vetoes, then claiming it’s not really about those “critical priorities” noted by Reid and Pelosi, it’s about keeping the Democrats’ pork barrel flowing.
Besides, Bush won’t be on the ballot next time around, but the Democratic majority in Congress will be, so what’s he got to lose?
Mark Tapscott is editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner.
