Sparring Begins On Capitol Hill
As Congressional Democrats stepped hungrily to the brink of power on Wednesday, promising constant prodding of the Bush administration to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq, President Bush pushed back against the political opposition as he contemplated divided government for his final two years in the White House.
Mr. Bush said he would soon propose a five-year plan to balance the budget, and he challenged Democrats to avoid passing "bills that are simply political" statements. The president also exhorted Congress to "end the dead of night process" of quietly tucking expensive pet projects into spending bills.
"This budget will restrain spending while setting priorities," Mr. Bush in a statement he delivered in the Rose Garden after meeting with his Cabinet at the White House.
"It will address the most urgent needs of our nation, in particular the need to protect ourselves from radicals and terrorists, the need to win the war on terror, the need to maintain a strong national defense, and the need to keep this economy growing by making tax relief permanent," Mr. Bush said of the budget proposal that he will soon send to Capitol Hill.
Mr. Bush, faced with working with an opposition Congress for the first time of his presidency, welcomed new members of Congress and said he's anxious to work with them on the nation's priorities during the remaining two years of his presidency.
"It's time to set aside politics and focus on the future," he said.
"Congress has changed," Mr. Bush added. "Our obligations to the country haven't changed."
But Democrats are planning to spend their first 100 hours tackling an ambitious agenda without any input from Republicans, CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports. The priorities include upping the minimum wage, expanding embryonic stem cell research and bargaining for lower Medicare drug prices.
Republicans are wondering what happened to all the talk of bipartisanship that surfaced after the election.
"I am very disappointed," said Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif. "It's totally inconsistent with what we have been promised throughout this campaign process."
But, the president, in a newspaper opinion piece published Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal, also served notice to lawmakers:
"If the Congress chooses to pass bills that are simply political statements, they will have chosen stalemate," Mr. Bush wrote. "If a different approach is taken, the next two years can be fruitful ones for our nation. We can show the American people that Republicans and Democrats can come together to find ways to help make America a more secure, prosperous and hopeful society."
CBS News national political correspondent Gloria Borger said that what the president is saying in this column is "if you can't beat 'em join 'em."
Borger says Mr. Bush is telling congressional Democrats, "'I want to do some of the reforms you want to do, too. I saw the results of that election.' He talked about getting rid of these so-called earmarks, pork-barrel projects that are inserted into legislation in the middle of the night. The president said, 'I want to do that. I'm going to submit my own bill.' Well, lo and behold, and of course he knew this, the Democrats have their own bill they are going to pass in the first 100 hours. They're going to try to beat each other to punch on this one because they know it's what the public wants."
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Democrats ran in the midterm elections on a message of compromise, and want to work with Mr. Bush.
"We hope that when the president says compromise, it means more than 'do it my way,' which is what he's meant in the past," Schumer said.
He said fiscal restraint is one area where the executive and legislative branches of government can work together.
"Over the past few years, pro-growth economic policies have generated higher revenues," Mr. Bush said. "Together with spending restraint, these policies allowed us to meet our goal of cutting the budget deficit in half three years ahead of schedule."
The president's critics argue that the White House is using sleight of hand when boasting about the deficit.
Mr. Bush can rightly state that he has fulfilled his 2004 campaign pledge to cut the deficit in half by the time he leaves office. In fact, he can say he has done it three years early. But in making that claim, the president is using the administration's original forecast of what the 2004 deficit was expected to be — not what it actually turned out to be.
Back when Mr. Bush made his promise, the administration was predicting that the 2004 deficit would be $521 billion. That prediction turned out to be off by $100 billion. To achieve the feat of slicing the actual 2004 deficit number in half, the federal deficit Mr. Bush was highlighting would have to have dropped to $206 billion, not $247.7 billion.
The long-term deficit picture remains bleak.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that the deficit for the current budget year, which ends next Sept. 30, will rise to $286 billion. Over the next decade, the office forecasts that the deficit will total $1.76 trillion.
Mr. Bush called on Congress Wednesday to sharply reduce spending on pet projects prized by lawmakers.
"One important message we all should take from the elections is that people want to end the secretive process by which Washington insiders are able to get billions of dollars directed to projects — many of them pork-barrel projects that have never been reviewed or voted on by the Congress," he said.
Democrats have already pledged to cut back on the spending, called "earmarks."
"But we need to do more," Mr. Bush said. "Here's my own view to end the dead-of-the-night process: Congress needs to adopt real reform that requires full disclosure of the sponsors, the costs, the recipients and the justifications for every earmark."
He called on Congress to cut the number and cost of earmarks next year by at least half.
According to a Congressional Research Service study, the number of earmarks in spending, or appropriations, bills went from 4,126 in 1994 to 15,877 in 2005. The value of those earmarks doubled to $47.4 billion in the same period. Earmarked projects often include roads, bridges and economic development efforts.