By Stan Collender, NationalJournal.com
© National Journal Group Inc.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007

The latest sign that the White House has launched a budget war against Congress occurred last Saturday when, even though immigration and the Middle East were on the minds of more people, the president decided to devote his weekly radio address to the FY08 appropriations.

	The White House appears to be precipitating battles that will be extremely acrimonious even by today's standards.

The president used language that could be described as "fighting words." He put the blame on Democrats in Congress for the growth in earmarks even though the increase occurred when the House and Senate were under Republican control and in appropriations that he signed.

It's hard to imagine what the White House is thinking.

George Bush is a lame-duck president facing a Congress controlled by the other political party. His job approval ratings are as low as or lower than they have been at any time in his presidency. The GOP candidates running to replace him seem to view running away from him and his policies as an excellent campaign strategy.

Bush is also presiding over an extremely unpopular war that is likely to get even more unpopular in the months ahead. He has so little to show for his six-plus years in office that the administration is still searching for something positive as a legacy.

And the Bush record on the budget is dismal. He has added trillions of dollars in debt and approved increased spending in so many ways that fiscal conservatives have forsaken him. His budget directors are little-known and have no credibility with the general pubic or financial markets. His Treasury secretaries have been practically irrelevant in making domestic economic policy. The president's credibility on the budget is virtually nonexistent.

Finally, spectacular failures over the past few years in a variety of federal programs have demonstrated that the president doesn't have the ability or perhaps the will to deliver the smaller, more effective federal government he promised. The failures have also demonstrated that, for most people, the choice between smaller and less effective and larger and more effective is not really a choice at all.

Under these circumstances, it's hard to understand why the White House has decided that this is the ideal time to go to war with Congress on the budget.

Yet that's exactly what's happening. Not only do all of the signs point to a steady series of knock-down, drag-out fights with Congress over the FY08 appropriations, but the White House appears to be precipitating battles that will be extremely acrimonious even by today's standards of extraordinarily bitter partisanship.

It's possible, of course, that the White House thinks it has nothing to lose by going to war over appropriations. The president may think the best chance for any legislative legacy will be if his vetoes are sustained and he ends up looking like the one who was willing to stand up to congressional insistence on higher spending. In fact, he cited congressional support in his Saturday radio address as one of the reasons for his threatened vetoes.

But the White House has to know that a letter from congressional Republicans pledging general support is not the same as actually voting to sustain a veto on a bill that is important to a representative's district or state. The president also has to assume that as his lame-duck status grows over the next few months, and especially if his job approval rating continues to fall, GOP members of Congress are far more likely to vote to protect themselves politically back home than to create a legacy for George Bush.

That may be why the White House has already backed off its threat to veto every FY08 appropriation. It has already indicated that one of the first bills that will be passed by Congress -- the military construction/VA bill, which will be at least $2 billion above the administration's request -- will be signed by the president because there is no chance a veto will be sustained.

It's hard to see how the president can win this war.

Even if he vetoes all of the appropriations and all of the vetoes are sustained, the savings will be less than $20 billion out of a FY08 total of nearly $3 trillion in spending. That's a great deal of political heartache for less than one half of one percent savings.

But not all of the bills will be vetoed and not all of the vetoes will be sustained. Some of the bills will include funds that GOP representatives and senators will need and want to support.

It's also hard to imagine how the president will veto the FY08 Pentagon appropriation. And what will happen if that bill is part of a package of bills sent to the president just before the fiscal year ends in September? Will he really risk the resulting political fallout if his vetoes shut down part of the government including the military?

The biggest question is whether the White House even considered negotiating with the congressional leadership or whether confrontation with Democrats is so much a part of its DNA that it was the only option considered. A compromise apparently was mentioned at some point but was quickly dismissed by the administration.

The White House could have called that agreement a success and characterized it as a win. After all, the additional spending would have been no more than a virtual rounding error more than what the president requested in his budget.

That would have been a positive legacy and something the president could have built on during his final 18 months in office. Losing a war on appropriations won't be.

-- Stan Collender is a NationalJournal.com contributing editor and managing director at Qorvis Communications in Washington, D.C. A frequent speaker on the budget and the economy to audiences across the country, he is also author of "The Guide to the Federal Budget." His e-mail address is secollender@nationaljournal.com.

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