Bush discovers new veto toy

By Weekly Archive On Nov 20, 2007

Converts
to any cause are the most obnoxious people in the world. Whatever the
issue, they think they’re the first ones in history to get it — be
it religion, exercise or morality. They never stop bragging, and they
never stop showing off.

Case
in point. Once Democrats took control of Congress in January, George
W. Bush suddenly became a convert to the presidential veto. And he’s
been shaking it like a baby with a new rattle ever since.

During
his first five years in office, Bush did not exercise his veto power
at all. Most notably, despite soaring budget deficits and pledges of
fiscal responsibility, he did not veto one single spending bill
passed by the Republican Congress. His first veto, on expanding
federal funding on stem-cell research, didn’t come till September
2006. A month before vetoing a second stem-cell bill, in June 2007,
he vetoed a timeline for bringing American troops home from Iraq.

Bush’s
first spending veto didn’t come until last month, when he rejected
expansion of the children’s health program. Since then, he’s laid
down one veto — soon overridden by Congress — on legislation to
fund new water projects, including construction of higher levees
along the Katrina-battered Gulf coast. He’s vetoed a second measure
for education, health care, and job training. And he threatens to
veto any new Iraq funding that includes a timetable for troop
withdrawal, as well as any bill that increases domestic spending.
Democrats are spending money so fast, Bush told a group of Indiana
business leaders, they remind him of "a teenager with a brand
new credit card."

See
what I mean about converts? Given his record of the last seven years,
Bush’s sudden reappearance as a born-again fiscal conservative is
actually laugh-out-loud funny.

Let
the facts speak for themselves. In seven years, Bush has not once
balanced the budget, nor presented a balanced budget to Congress. He
took office with a $236 billion surplus, which he quickly turned into
a $413 billion deficit. The projected deficit for 2008 is still $180
billion, not counting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, or the money
we are borrowing from the Social Security Trust Fund.

Bush’s
record of fiscal profligacy continues. The federal budget in 2001 was
$1.9 trillion; today, it’s $2.7 trillion. Under Bush and a Republican
Congress, the national debt has soared from 5.8 trillion to $9
trillion — 25 percent of which is owned by China, Japan and the U.K.
It took 42 presidents 224 years to build up $1 trillion of
foreign-held debt. It’s taken George Bush just seven years to
accumulate $1.22 trillion.

Looking
for a teenager bingeing on a credit card? He’s the one. Working
mostly with a Republican Congress, George Bush has delivered the
biggest federal budget ever, plus the biggest federal deficits,
biggest federal workforce, and biggest federal government. Quite
simply, he’s the biggest federal spender in history. And suddenly
he’s preaching to Democrats about fiscal responsibility?

Of
course, it’s the open-ended war in Iraq that’s the biggest ticket on
Bush’s credit card — and its cost may be almost double what the
administration claims. The White House estimates the combined cost of
the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to be $804 billion. But that’s just
the amount of money directly appropriated by Congress. According to
Congress’ Joint Economic Committee, when you also count indirect
costs, such as higher oil prices, economic disruptions and loss of
productive investments, the total costs of both wars is actually $1.5
trillion — or $20,200 for every family of four in America. And,
without a plan to pay for the war, that $1.5 trillion is piled onto
our already overloaded national debt.

Bottom
line: It’s too late for George Bush to pretend to be a fiscal
conservative. The road back to fiscal responsibility does not begin
with Bush’s shaking his veto pen at the Democrats, but instead with
Democrats’ exercising their own veto — on his endless war.

Bill
Press is host of a nationally syndicated radio show and author of a
new book, "How
the Republicans Stole Religion."
You can hear "The Bill Press Show" at billpressshow.com.
His email address is: bill@billpress.com. His Web site is:
www.billpress.com.