By Stan Collender, NationalJournal.com
© National Journal Group Inc.
Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2007

The White House criticized Congress again last week for not passing any of the FY08 appropriations. This time the administration based its complaint on an arbitrary date -- Oct. 26.

	The White House has been trying to keep the Democrats off the field by running a ball-control legislative strategy.

This has become a typical tactic. The Bush White House picks a totally subjective number or date to prove a point and then uses it to show that the administration has accomplished more than it is getting credit for -- or that its opponents have done less than expected.

For example, the Bush administration is infamous among budget watchers for projecting a phony record-high deficit and later claiming that cutting it in half is a significant accomplishment.

The administration also claims the Dow Jones industrial average has doubled since President Bush has been in office, using the nadir the average reached when military activities began in Iraq and Afghanistan as its benchmark. But compared to the stock index's value on the day the president was inaugurated, the Dow actually has risen a relatively lackluster average of about 5 percent a year.

The president's claim that he has cut the deficit far below the average of the past 40 years is similarly spurious. It conveniently ignores the surpluses that existed each of the four years before the Bush administration began and that the deficit the president is cutting is one he created. And why, exactly, is 40 years the right frame for comparison, anyway?

So, in a bow to the pleadings of Dean Baker in his blog Beat the Press, once you consider the context in which the president's most recent criticism was made, it becomes anything but compelling.

First, the FY08 appropriations process began more than a month late because Republicans last year decided to leave almost all of the work on the FY07 appropriations to the newly elected Democratic-controlled Congress. The White House was completely silent when this happened and so at best was a willing accomplice.

The result was that the new Congress first had to finish the old Congress' work. Therefore, rather than criticizing lawmakers for not getting the FY08 appropriations done by the start of the fiscal year, this Congress should get extra credit and a deadline extension for doing additional work. The six-week delay at the start of the FY08 appropriations process means that Nov. 15 rather than Oct. 1 should be the first milestone by which this Congress is judged. That makes Dec. 7 the equivalent of the Oct. 26 date used by the president.

Second, much like the strategy a football team uses when its opponent has a potent offense, the White House and its congressional allies have been trying to keep the Democrats off the field by running a ball-control legislative strategy. Their thinking is that, the longer debates take, the less likely the Democrats will be able to score. As a result, the White House has done just about everything possible to slow the consideration of FY08 appropriations and appropriations debates have taken longer than expected.

Third, the White House has done just about everything possible to slow the consideration of FY08 appropriations. Its refusal to negotiate on spending levels earlier in the year has been a major reason for the current stalemate.

Fourth, the new rules on earmarks, which the White House has said it supports, have also seriously slowed the process. Not only have they required significant additional staff work since earmark requests are included in the process for the first time, but they have also made it harder to gather votes as members have less of a personal take in some bills. In previous years, earmarks made it possible for the leadership to gather additional votes with unreported, member-requested projects.

Finally, while the House Democrats' majority is about the same size as the one House Republicans had in the previous Congress, the Senate Democratic majority is four votes fewer, and that's when there aren't any senators on the campaign trail running for president. Combine that with the Republican ball-control legislative strategy, and it was virtually inevitable that the FY08 appropriations process would take more time to complete.

Democrats absolutely don't get a free pass. At some point soon, they will deserve to be criticized if FY08 appropriations are not sent to the White House for the president's review. But given the context in which the appropriations debate is taking place, the period between the middle of November to the middle of December is the appropriate time for their work (or lack of it) to be judged.

-- 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" and writes the new blog, Capital Gains and Games. His e-mail address is secollender@nationaljournal.com.

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