Redstate

By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Budget Fights | Congress | Congress | Fiscal Discipline | White House — Comments (5) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

You know, if the Bush Administration chose to be this tough on the issue of spending when Republicans held Congress, Republicans would still be holding Congress as I write this.

But credit where it is due. Another day, another defeat for House Democrats means that the White House has finally gotten its political operation in order.

Read on . . .

In the face of stiff opposition from powerful fellow Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) has abandoned a proposal she supported less than 24 hours ago to eliminate lawmakers' earmarks from the omnibus spending package.

Pelosi told the Democratic chairmen of the House Appropriations subcommittees, the so-called appropriations cardinals, that earmarks would stay in the omnibus and that Democratic leaders would accede to cut spending to levels demanded by President Bush in order to save 11 spending bills from a veto, said sources familiar with a meeting that took place in Pelosi's office early Wednesday morning.  

The House Democrats' tentative plan is to finalize the package for passage in the next day or so, said sources.

By leaving earmarks largely untouched and agreeing to Bush's budget ceiling, Democrats have capitulated in their spending battle with Republicans. In the end, Democrats realized they would not be able to muster enough Republican votes to override Bush's veto. The president vowed to reject any spending package that exceeded the $933 billion limit he set.

The spin being put on this by Democrats is that they will now be able to go forward with funding their priorities. Well, no one thought that Democratic priorities wouldn't find at least some funding in the appropriations process. But given the fact that Nancy Pelosi has cut off the Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, David Obey, at the knees a mere day after stating that she thought his plan was "great," one has to think that there are a lot of hard feelings in the Democratic Caucus these days.

That can't bode well for future policy battles when disgruntled Democrats might work to ensure that their Speaker gets even more humiliated than she must currently feel after this most recent political battle with the White House.