Bush Signals Budget Accord

So with Bush now facing both a House and Senate controlled by the Democrats, the man who has never made any attempt to reduce the deficit, the man who has never vetoed a single spending bill, now endorses a Democrat call to balance the budget by 2012.

But now for the first time since he took office, both parties have set a mutual target for eliminating the deficit -- an implicit agreement that raises the profile of the issue and may create a political imperative that prods the two sides to find ways to meet the goal or be held accountable for failing.

"We've all been entrusted with public office at a momentous time in our nation's history," Bush said. "And together we have important things to do. It's time to set aside politics and focus on the future."

Rob Portman, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, made a point of calling Democratic leaders Tuesday night to preview the president's remarks. In an interview yesterday, he said the shared target was a powerful signal of progress.

"It makes a huge difference," he said. "It's good news for the taxpayers that you have both parties working toward the same goal."

Of course, Bush hopes to balance the budget without reversing his tax cuts for the rich. Which hardly suggests that he is serious about this. He is the first American President I can think of who lowered rather than raised taxes at a time of war.

Democrats responded to Bush's comments with deep skepticism. "It's real hard to look at the man's record and take him seriously on these issues," Kent Conrad (N.D.), the incoming Senate Budget Committee chairman, said in an interview. "He's got a lot to prove. Talk is cheap."

Bruce Reed, president of the Democratic Leadership Council and an aide to President Bill Clinton, said Bush must abandon some red-line positions to reach genuine agreement with Congress. "For Bush to announce that he shares Democrats' willingness to cut the deficit by 2012 doesn't mean a heck of a lot if he's ruling out any of the ways that Democrats want to get there," Reed said.

And Bush has now suddenly discovered that he is opposed to "earmarks", the process where spending commitments are slipped into unrelated bills. This is not something that he has ever objected to before and one is left thinking that he's simply jumping on to a Democratic bandwagon and attempting to look fiscally responsible before this is forced upon him.

Democrats plan to introduce legislation requiring lawmakers to attach their names to earmarks and to certify that such spending items would not financially benefit them or their spouses. "Given the track record of this administration, the last person in the universe who should lecture the Congress on fiscal responsibility is George Bush," said incoming House Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey (D-Wis.).

So we begin to get the first taste of Democratic power in Washington, although Bush has already threatened to use his veto on other issues. So we can only think accepting this opposition to "earmarks" is Bush's attempt to look bipartisan before wielding his veto on stem cell research and the like.

Indeed, in an article he wrote for The Wall Street Journal Bush urged Democrats to rein in government spending through the "earmarks" practice, almost making the policy sound like his own.

But he slipped in a warning:

"If the Congress chooses to pass bills that are simply political statements, they will have chosen stalemate" - a clear threat that he would use his veto to block bills he does not like. With only small majorities in both chambers, the Democrats have no chance of assembling the two-thirds majority required to overrule him. Indeed, the veto shadow hangs over the raft of measures that Ms Pelosi intends to push through the House in its first 100 hours of business in the next two weeks.

They include relatively uncontroversial items such as tighter ethics rules for Congressmen in the wake of recent lobbying scandals, and an increase in the minimum wage from $5.75 (£3) to $7.25 per hour - the first such boost since 1997, and a plan Mr Bush has signalled he will not oppose.

Other proposals are almost certain to run into White House objections, among them a vote on expanding embryonic stem cell research, an idea that has wide public support but which Mr Bush blocked in 2005 on the only occasion he has wielded the veto in his six years in office.

Equally uncertain is the fate of the Democrats' plan to vote down a ban on the government negotiating with the politically powerful pharmaceutical companies to lower drug prices under the Medicare public health programme.

Losing an election is not going to change George Bush or his prejudices. It will be interesting to see if the man who's policies have been rejected by the electorate will wield his veto to please his Christian right wing base.

It will also be fascinating to see how Republicans, who surely know that this man and his style of governing have been rejected, react.

After all, it is they who face re-election in 2008, not the Decider.

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tag: Bush, Nancy Pelosi, spending, earmarks,