President Bush ripped the Democratic Congress Friday for trying to raise taxes and domestic spending while failing to fund the troops in Iraq or confirm his nominee for Attorney General.
In his first public remarks since returning from a tour of the California wildfires, Bush said he was “disappointed by what Congress had been doing and even more disappointed by what they had not been doing.”
Bush took a veiled swipe at Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid by quoting from a speech by the Nevada Democrat, who said in January: “No longer can we waste time here in the Capitol while families in America struggle to get ahead.”
The president sought to turn those words against Reid by reciting a litany of shortcomings by Congress since Democrats took control of the House and Senate in January. These include failing to confirm Michael Mukasey as Attorney General or to pass an emergency war funding bill.
“Today Congress set a record they should not be proud of,” Bush said in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. “October the 26th is the latest date in 20 years that Congress has failed to get a single annual appropriations bill to the president’s desk.
“And that’s not the only thing congressional leaders have failed to get done,” he added. “They have yet to make the Internet tax moratorium permanent, or even extend it, even though this moratorium is set to expire in just a few days.”
Reid returned fire by accusing Bush of refusing to provide money for “severely under-funded” programs, including the expansion of health care for children.
“President Bush – the biggest-spending president in 40 years – threatens to veto our requestsbased on the laughable claim that he is fiscally responsible,” Reid said. “It is irresponsible for President Bush to ignore these critical priorities as he calls for another $200 billion for his mismanaged wars.”
Bush also slammed Rep. Charles Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, for proposing what the president called “a massive tax package that raises taxes on more than a million small-business owners, among others.”
