Bush and the 150 years of Veto history AGAINST him
Sun Oct 10, 2004 at 09:25:19 PM PST
TinyURL:
http://tinyurl.com/5boph
From the second debate in St. Louis we saw a gentleman ask about why Bush hadn't used his veto power to control spending:
GIBSON: The next question is for President Bush, and it comes from Matthew O'Brien.
O'BRIEN: Mr. President, you have enjoyed a Republican majority in the House and Senate for most of your presidency. In that time, you've not vetoed a single spending bill. Excluding $120 billion spent in Iran and -- I'm sorry, Iraq and Afghanistan, there has been $700 billion spent and not paid for by taxes.
Please explain how the spending you have approved and not paid for is better for the American people than the spending proposed by your opponent.
BUSH: Right, thank you for that.
We have a deficit. We have a deficit because this country went into a recession. [...]
And you're right, I haven't vetoed any spending bills, because we work together.
Non-homeland, non-defense discretionary spending was raising at 15 percent a year when I got into office. And today it's less than 1 percent, because we're working together to try to bring this deficit under control.[...]
Not only has Bush signed every single spending bill that has arrived at his desk, he's signed every single bill that has arrived at his desk.
In fact, President Bush is the first President since 1850 to have not vetoed a single bill. 150 years. 150 years since Millard Fillmore (1850-53), a member of the Whig party who worked with the 31st and 32nd Congresses, didn't veto a bill.
Update [2004-10-16 0:53:58 by drh]:: Analysis now includes Senate data.
Analysis:
Let's look at the data behind the history here. We're talking 18 Republican and 11 Democratic Presidents -- 18 Republican, 18 Democratic, and 39 Mixed Congresses since the 35th Congress in 1857. Some of those Presidents had control over the Congress during their entire term (I.e., a Republican President and a Republican majority in the House and Senate), and some Presidents had no control their entire term, and some split like Clinton who only had 1 Congress (103rd in 1993) that was Democratic. But through it all, every single President since 1850 has vetoed bills -- every single one.
Bush's Failure:
Bush's claims that "I haven't vetoed any spending bills, because we work together" is ludicrous." 7 Presidents before him (4 Republicans and 3 Democrats) were in the party that controlled the Congress throughtout their term like George W. Bush, and they all vetoed bills; in fact, on average they vetoed 13 bills per Congress (excluding Roosevelt who vetoed 106 bills per Congress during his term). And because of that, I claim that he is personally accountable for the deficit spending as he had every opportunity to veto a nondefense discretionary spending bill. But he did nothing.
Consider this quote from when over 150 Economics and Business professors wrote an open letter to the President on October 4, 2004:
The fiscal reversal that has taken place under your leadership is so extreme that it would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. The federal budget surplus of over $200 billion that we enjoyed in the year 2000 has disappeared, and we are now facing a massive annual deficit of over $400 billion. [...] Although some members of your administration have suggested that the mountain of new debt accumulated on your watch is mainly the consequence of 9-11 and the war on terror, budget experts know that this is simply false.
Critique
Checks and balances is one of the keystones of our government, and Bush choose to ignore his duty by failing to exercise his veto power.
- Bush has defied 150 years of history to not veto any bills,
- his claim that "we work together" is completely bogus as a defense for flood of spending ergo a deficit,
- Bush is personally accountable for the spending because his signature, and his signature alone makes these bills law, and he had every opportunity to say otherwise, and
- it may expose a weakness in that he's unwilling to fight the Republican leadership in the Congress when it comes down to it.
This issue has been on my mind for quite a while, and his debate answer was the final straw. Not only did he misquote the spending statistics (15% and 1% are bogus), but he had a completely unsatisfactory answer for the lack of vetoes.
Results and Data:
I have an Excel spreadsheet with all the data, and 3 charts -- the main chart, a trend chart and a chronologial chart.
Next Steps:
Please contribute your thoughts and discussion. Maybe examples of spending bills he clearly should have vetoed, or ones he threatened to veto but didn't carry out, etc.
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