Yesterday, President Bush vetoed a $606-billion spending bill that would have funded education, health and labor programs for the current fiscal year because it contained what he saw as wasteful spending.
In this newest attempt to cast himself in whichever role he feels will garner the greatest public approval (previous incarnations have included a military hero, Harry Truman reincarnated and "somebody just like you"), Bush purports to be a responsible fiscal conservative, the only remaining bulwark between the American people and a raging tide of free-spending liberals.
First of all, it is important to note that the bill passed in the House on a vote that was three shy of veto-proof and in the Senate with a 56-37 majority, meaning that a significant number of Republicans are in agreement with their liberal counterparts.
The really bewildering part, apart from Bush's inability to settle on a persona, is that on the same day that the president vetoed a bill with a 4.3-percent spending increase for education, health and labor programs, he signed a $471-billion Defense Department spending bill that contained a nine percent increase in funds - more than twice the size of the education, health and labor increase.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the president signed the defense spending legislation because "it is essential to deliver these funds to our military in a time of war."
But not one penny of the $471 billion is going to troops in Iraq or Afghanistan because spending for the wars is financed through separate supplemental appropriations.
Additionally, after vetoing a bill for health, labor and education programs because of a nearly $10-billion increase, the president asked Congress to approve his proposed $196-billion supplemental spending plan for the wars, saying lawmakers "should not go home for the Christmas holidays without giving our troops on the frontlines the funds they need to succeed."
After unabashedly spending Bill Clinton's budget surplus into a record deficit and throwing untold billions of dollars into the quagmire in Iraq, Bush turned around yesterday and, with no awareness of the irony of his words, declared that the Democratic majority in Congress was "acting like a teenager with a new credit card."
Congress already rolled over once when the president wanted to play Champion of Freedom in Iraq. This country simply cannot and should not tolerate another instance of this President of the United States playing make-believe at the expense of the American people.
