Demanding a federal budget that is fair, responsible, and meets our nation's priorities

Thursday, December 06, 2007

Illusionists who Provide no Illusion

The lead editorial in today's New York Times, The President's Cynical Budget War, details President Bush's "attempt to repair the Republican Party's threadbare fiscal reputation" by stonewalling the FY 2008 budget process, vetoing every appropriations measure that's hit his desk thus far this year -- except for the spending bill funding the Pentagon.

Mr. Bush is clearly hoping that the public will somehow forget that he is the one who spent the last seven years running up huge deficits and debt with his off-the-books war in Iraq and serial tax cuts customized for his affluent political base. Mr. Bush's Republican allies on Capitol Hill are also hoping that the voters will forget how they abetted the president through all those years. Those fiscal turncoats are now scrambling to pose once more as budget hawks to survive in next year's watershed election.

In all this, the President is ably aided and abetted by his co-conspirators in Congress. As we've learned (see The Filibuster and Fiscal Policy), a party with as few as 41 Senators and sufficient unity can stymie the majority's efforts to perform Congress' only constitutionally mandated responsibility: to provide the federal government with an annual budget, and the money to execute its laws.

Yesterday, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) took to the Senate floor to describe a spectacle that, sadly, has become all too common:

I sat here for a while this afternoon and saw something quite stunning. My colleague stood up and said, on the appropriations bill that passed the Senate by a wide margin, over 80 votes on transportation-housing and so on, she wanted to bring the conference report up to the Senate. There was an objection by the Republican leader of the Senate: I object.

Then, immediately afterwards, Senator Cornyn from Texas stood up and said: I do not understand what all of the problem is, the way the majority is running this place, why do we not get appropriations bills to the floor of the Senate?

This was immediately after his side had already objected to bringing an appropriations bill to the floor of the Senate. It is as if they think no one is watching. These are illusionists who provide no illusion.