A Civil Question

Rather than asserting some sort of extra-Constitutional power to amend Congressional bills post facto, Bush is asking for the power to pull out individual items tucked into massive spending measures and force Congress to take a public up-or-down vote on each one.

Michael A. Fletcher writes in The Washington Post: "Bush has asked for the line-item veto in years past as part of his overall budget requests. But he has never before offered specific legislation seeking the authority. White House aides said the proposal is timely because of growing outrage over the widening budget deficit and the growth of legislative earmarks, which has threatened to undermine the image of Republicans as proponents of small government. Some conservatives said Bush's own credibility on the issue is open to question.

" 'Under President Bush, the government has expanded by 45 percent in five years,' said Brian Riedl, a federal budget analyst with the conservative Heritage Foundation. While he praised the line-item veto as a good 'common-sense' tool, Riedl said that 'there is no substitute for vetoing expensive spending bills.'

"Since the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, the number of home-district earmarks has jumped from 4,155 valued at about $29 billion in 1994 to 14,211 worth nearly $53 billion 10 years later, according to the Congressional Research Service. Meanwhile, the Bush administration has forecast a record budget deficit for 2007 of $439 billion."

Here's the transcript of a press briefing on the proposal by Office of Management and Budget Director Josh Bolten. "The legislation is designed to do two things: one, to give the President a scalpel to reduce unnecessary or wasteful spending; and, second, to improve accountability and cast a brighter light on the practice of slipping earmarks into bills at the last minute."

It sounds quite noble, in some ways. But of course the devil's in the details -- and the execution.

So here's a question that would help the American public determine how Bush would wield such a tool: Can the White House please give some examples of what Bush would have cut in previous years, had he had this authority?

That would help us understand the sense of scale here, and also the potential for partisan chicanery. Would this all just amount to chump-change compared to Bush's multi-hundred-billion-dollar deficits? And would it simply become another way for the White House to punish political opponents?

Meanwhile, Holly Rosenkrantz writes for Bloomberg: "George W. Bush will hit an historic milestone this month: On March 20, he'll pass James Monroe for second place, behind Thomas Jefferson, among U.S. presidents who went the longest without vetoing legislation."

Competence Watch

Alan Abramowitz wrote in The Washington Post Outlook section on Sunday: "The problem for President Bush is a growing perception that he simply isn't competent. That's the story behind the polling numbers that have declined -- bad week by bad week -- since February 2005 when the president's approval rating stood at a respectable 52 percent.

"The predecessor whom Bush has begun to resemble isn't, as many liberal Democrats seem to believe, Richard Nixon. It's Jimmy Carter. Carter's political demise began when the American people, including many Democrats, started to perceive him as in over his head in the Oval Office. That's what may be happening now to Bush. . . .

James Klurfeld writes in a Newsday opinion column: "An old acquaintance in Washington - a former member of Republican administrations whose foreign policy views are decidedly hard-line - recently had this to say to a friend about the Bush administration: This might be the most inept administration in American history."