Bush's Punch Line Item Veto

President Bush just made me laugh with his latest proposal, he wants to have a line item veto in order to reduce pork coming out of Congress. This makes me laugh which is why I call it Bush's punch line item veto.

First off, let's be clear here, the Republicans control Congress and the White House, they haven't needed a line item veto to organize efforts to reduce pork projects, all they have to do is REDUCE IT! What is Bush trying to say, that his own party has been guilty of producing massive pork? Well, at least in this he is correct. His party is indeed spending like drunken sailors. Worse still is that they don't provide funds to pay for their spending sprees. They run the deficit higher and higher, reduce taxes on the wealthy, and never tackle the tough issues of fiscal responsibility.

The Republican Party has fully become the party of borrow and spend. Every time I see the Bushites sending another fiscal budget that's in deficit to the American people, or some pork project slipped into a bill in the midnight hour, I point out to the two teens around here how the Bushites are spending their future. I usually say, "See that? Guess who's going to pay for it?" They've figured out the answer is "We are."

The borrow and spend Republicans won't be so honest with our youth, in fact they never explain how they are going to pay for their largess. They also won't explain who won't be helping with the bill either. They don't sing and dance "Tax cuts for the rich are here again, who we love is clear again, so let's sing a song for the rich again, happy days are there again!" No, they are pretty quiet about who gets a break on the spending bill.

Line item veto, what a joke. President Bush hasn't vetoed a bill EVER!

Now picture this. Bush who has repeatedly said that he doesn't like to read, sitting down to study the phone book size bills passed by Congress. Most Americans don't realize the vast amount of pages that these bills entail. So Bush is going to sit at his desk with a red marker, scratching out bits and pieces of the bill that he doesn't approve of, day after day for weeks until he's happy. Yeah, right.

What will really happen is that his advisers and lawyers will be the readers that eventually tell Bush what he should edit out. There is no way Bush is going to read the document to see if they are advising him correctly, as he says, he likes to delegate. This will be another thing he delegates, his line item veto decisions.

Personally I think this is all about future politics. The Republicans are worried that they will lose either the House or Senate to the Democrats this fall. So the Republicans want to pass this line item veto to block Democratic bills in case they do lose power in Congress. If they don't lose the Congress then it will continue to be business as usual, a Republican Congress will send its bloated pork laden bills to the White House and Bush will sign them without reading a word.