Bush has already made some public statements about the budget. The Washington Post covers the numbers but the LA Times goes a little more into the politics. Of course Kieth Olbermann did a better job on this tonight, I'm sure the video will be posted soon.
So Bush now is talking about reducing the deficit and controling pork. I just don't know where to begin with this. Maybe with the fact that he inherited a surplus and turned it into the largest deficit in history. He did it complicitly with his own party in control of the Congress while they trotted out ridiculous pork and didn't even tell the Democrats where the meetings were. Bush did his part by never even including the war in the budget and never vetoing one spending bill (when Congress could even manage to pass one).
And what are Bush's solutions? Make the tax cuts permanent. The basic math says that means that less money will come to the government so the deficit will get worse. Really basic math is beyond this guy. Ok, so the theory is that will stimulate the economy and the more money generated will mean more taxes. But we've had 6 years of this and the worst deficit in history, when will they realize this doesn't work?
Oh and the other thing he needs is the line item veto. We've already established this as unconstitutional but that hasn't stopped him before. And it's moronic to be talking about it now. The Democrats haven't done anything about pork except to say they will suspend earmarks (what the Republicans have perfected for pork) in their first 100 hours in power.
Meanwhile the Democrats have to figure out if they want to affect actual change in the country which will involve compromising with the administration (the Senate is tight and Bush still needs to sign bills into laws). So will that make Bush look stronger? You know the Republicans will twist it into being weak on principles and fliip flopping. Personally I'd like to see compromise come back to government, but I've already seen articles from the left saying lets give them a dose of their own medicine. Ugh, I'm tired of this already.
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Line item veto unconstitutional?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-item_veto
The President of the United States was briefly granted this power by the Line Item Veto Act of 1996, passed by Congress in order to control "pork barrel spending" that favors a particular region rather than the nation as a whole. The line-item veto was used 11 times to strike 82 items from the federal budget by President Bill Clinton.
However, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas F. Hogan decided on February 12, 1998, that unilateral amendment or repeal of only parts of statutes violated the U.S. Constitution. This ruling was subsequently affirmed on June 25, 1998, by a 6-3 decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case Clinton v. City of New York.
A constitutional amendment to give the President line item veto power has been considered periodically since the Court ruled the 1996 Act unconstitutional.
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