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Bush the SaboteurPosted on Sep 27, 2007By Marie Cocco WASHINGTON—If a candidate for any office ran on a promise to render government dysfunctional—to destroy its capacity to work on behalf of something roughly considered to be the common good, to assure that bitter division and not even a grudging tilt toward compromise would prevail—it is reasonable to assume that voters would recoil. This would surely be true if the office-seeker aspired to a seat on the local sewer commission. President Bush did not run for the White House on such a platform. But it is how he has governed, and how he seems to see his role—now more than ever. The predisposition has grown since the Democrats won control of Congress, an event that might have punctured the bubble of disinformation around Bush, but which seems only to have reinforced it. The crisis now at hand, besides Iraq, is how to finance the most basic operations of the federal government. It is a manufactured impasse, since Congress has actually made quicker progress in approving routine spending bills this year than in most. The House already has passed its dozen appropriations bills. This compares with none—zero—passed when Republicans led the chamber last year. When the Democrats began running the House in January, their first cleanup chore was completing that leftover task. The more deliberate Senate has passed four spending measures. This incomplete record is one reason Congress must pass one of those “continuing resolutions” that always seem to the public to symbolize political indolence. But this bit of housekeeping to keep the government operating after Oct. 1 shouldn’t be confused with the more significant reason a budget crisis is brewing—the reason there is the potential to repeat the infamous government shutdown of 1995. Bush, having declined to veto a single spending measure when Republicans controlled Congress, says he wants to veto just about all of them now. It is perhaps too near the twilight of his presidency to call Bush on this latest hypocrisy—and anyway, the repetition is tiresome. Better to illuminate the picayune nature of the fight Bush picks. The dispute is over a total—spread among all the spending bills—of $22 billion that Bush himself did not call for. That amounts to about 2 percent of federal spending that is subject to annual appropriations by Congress. How else to put it in perspective? Military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing nearly $10 billion every month. The president’s point isn’t to force negotiations over a piddling sum. It’s to fake out the public so that it believes Democrats can’t perform basic governmental tasks. Having already failed to bring an end to the Iraq crisis—because the president and his remaining Republican allies on Capitol Hill won’t allow it—Democrats are now to stand accused of botching the budget, too. A second goal is to rally the Republican conservative “base” before next year’s elections. A third is more cynical: The pox-on-both-their-houses story line that typically accompanies budget showdowns turns off independent voters. Still, many Republicans are increasingly isolated from their president. The four spending measures so far passed in the Senate have overwhelming bipartisan support. The tallies: homeland security, 89-4; military construction and veterans, 92-1; State Department and foreign operations, 81-12; transportation and housing, 88-7. The House spending bills also drew bipartisan support, with an average of more than 50 Republican votes, according to an analysis by the Appropriations Committee staff. But generally speaking, there won’t have been enough Republican votes to override Bush’s expected vetoes. Once again, House Republicans will control the outcome, irrespective of their losses last November. The fakery was best expressed by Bush, who last week gave himself the grade of “A” for “keeping taxes low and being fiscally responsible with the people’s money.” It so happens that on Bush’s watch—and with Republicans in control of Capitol HiIl—the federal budget swung from an anticipated 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion to an expected deficit of $2.8 trillion. This reversal of fiscal fortune has swelled the debt and driven the annual cost of interest on it to $261 billion in fiscal 2008, more than 10 times the amount that is to be so hotly disputed this fall.
The numbers will not matter because the point is to show that Democrats cannot win for having won. This may be the only strategy Bush sees. But it’s no way to run a sewer commission.
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By don knutsen, September 30, 2007 at 10:59 am # Is this not the very definition of doing serious harm to our democracy ? Rendering it unable to function, purposely by a president is obvious grounds for impeachment. We do have prior rulings to fall back on that surely still apply today. re:The Committee on the Judiciary recommended to the This would seem to fit our current emporer to a tee. Is our goverment so broken that we can no longer take it back from a president and vice pres. who exhibit nothing but contempt for our democracy ?
By lawlessone, September 28, 2007 at 1:10 pm # There used to be a deadly game called Russian Roulette. It probably should be renamed Bush Roulette. You flirt with cultural, economic, diplomatic and literal suicide by putting a loaded Bush at your head, allow him spin and pull his trigger. I have long suspected that the reason we cannot seem to find bin Laden is because he shaved his beard and is working in the West Wing. Certainly everything that Osama sought and more has been achieved by Bush. Shame on us. [more irreverence at resistence-is-possible.blogspot.com]
By thomas billis, September 27, 2007 at 4:50 pm # The Democrats are spineless and the American public buys this shit so you tell me who is to blame.Is it one man who clearly out of his head or 300 million Americans who through their elected representatives let this happen.Time for the columnists to point the finger in the right direction at the people.The people who are not pressuring there representatives to do what is right, the people who think difficult issues will be explained to them in 30 second sound bites by the heads of their respective parties and finally the people democratic and republican who put party loyalty above their country.Stop blaming the moron and put the blame where it belongs.
By herdpoisoning, September 27, 2007 at 3:32 pm # There is part of the Democrat’s “Big Lie” that this argument is based on. By not following her constitutional mandate to impeach, though Bush’s High Crimes (war of agression, for instance) are well known and documented, Ms. Pelosi and those who named her Speaker of the House share as much of the burden of any veto that the known criminal in the White House performs as any Republican does. The DLC has completely undermined the Democratic party, rendering it ineffective, by picking those candidates, (yes this includes Hillary) that have shown NO spine and base their entire voting record on focus groups, rather than just doing what they know to be the correct thing to do.
By Chris Ferry, September 27, 2007 at 9:55 am # If the dictator was impeached after the democrats took office he wouldn’t have the power to control congress, so now the dems are going to complain about something they could have taken control of in 2004, they get no sympathy from me, and you know main stream media will say anything the dictator tells them to say Add Your Comment |
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