Congress Overrides Veto of Water Bill

The Bush presidency entered new territory this week by losing a fight with Congress over the $23 billion Water Resources Development Act. Last Friday, Mr. Bush vetoed the bill claiming that it was a waste of money. On Wednesday, the House of Representatives voted to override that veto on a vote of 361-54. Yesterday, the Senate did likewise on a vote of 79-14, meaning that Congress had passed legislation over presidential objections for the first time since this administration came into office. Mr. Bush is now an even lamer duck.

In vetoing the measure, Mr. Bush complained that the conference committee that reconciled the House and Senate versions of the bill added $8 billion to the total. “American taxpayers should not be asked to support a pork-barrel system of federal authorization and funding where a project's merit is an afterthought,” he stated. He also expressed concern that the 900 projects covered in the legislation would overwhelm the Army Corps of Engineers. Of course, having added a few trillion to the national debt and having wiped out the federal budget surplus years ago, he comes to fiscal responsibility rather late.

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and a Bushevik of the first order, disagreed, “I urge, as much as I hate to do this, my colleagues on the Republican side to join me in overriding the president’s veto on this very important bill.” Because the bill set a limit on how much could be spent on each project, he argued that passing the bill was “the only discipline that we have for spending.”

His colleague Mary Landrieu (D-LA) was plain confused by the veto, saying “I don't know why the president chose this bill to try to reassume the mantle of fiscal responsibility, but he picked the wrong bill.” Included in the legislation was the reconstruction of levees around New Orleans and the closure of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet -- a man-made channel that sent Katrina’s storm surge into the Lower 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish. To her and her constituents, the bill was vital. She said, “Frankly, without it, our long-term recovery is really in jeopardy.”

Having broken the presidential veto once, can it happen again? Of course, but in order to do so, the leaders in Congress are going to have to put together almost all the Democrats and more than a few Republicans. To achieve that, GOP loyalty to the president will have to be overcome by benefits to individual constituencies. That means focusing on domestic legislation and leaving the wars in Iraq-Nam and Afghanistan to one side. If they do so, the president becomes increasingly irrelevant.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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