{"id":6677,"date":"2006-02-22T09:41:56","date_gmt":"2006-02-22T14:41:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6677"},"modified":"2006-02-22T09:41:56","modified_gmt":"2006-02-22T14:41:56","slug":"no-one-believes-the-boy-who-cries-veto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/no-one-believes-the-boy-who-cries-veto\/","title":{"rendered":"No one believes the boy who cries ‘veto’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, in defending his port deal with the United Arab Emirates, the president was unequivocal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“They ought to listen to what I have to say about this. They ought to look at the facts, and understand the consequences of what they’re going to do. But if they pass a law, I’ll deal with it, with a veto.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Later, in the same press briefing, Bush said, in a matter-of-fact way, that the veto is just “one of the tools the President has to indicate to the legislative branch his intentions.” He added, “I say veto, by the way, quite frequently in messages to Congress.”<\/p>\n

And therein lies the problem. To follow up on a point I touched on yesterday, it’s worth remembering that Bush does throw the V-word around “quite frequently,” but never shows any follow through. Bush is already the first president in 176 years to serve a full term without exercising this power, and he’s on track to be the first since Thomas Jefferson to serve two full terms without vetoing a single thing.<\/p>\n

There have been an overabundance of veto threats<\/i>, but since the president doesn’t appear to stand behind his ultimatums, no one seems to take the threats seriously.<\/p>\n

Last fall, for example, Bush said, in no uncertain terms, that he’d veto a defense appropriations bill that prohibited prisoner abuse. Immediately thereafter, the Senate voted 90-9 to do it anyway, calling Bush’s bluff. It worked — Bush backed down. (Though he later issued a signing statement indicating he reserves the right to ignore Congress<\/a> on the issue.)<\/p>\n

It’s become something of a pattern — Bush makes a veto threat, Congress ignores him. In the 2000 campaign, Bush pledged to veto a McCain-Feingold campaign-finance bill. Congress passed it anyway and the president signed it. More recently, Bush said he’d veto any highway bill that exceeded $256 billion. Congressional Republicans passed a $286 billion bill and Bush effectively said, “Close enough.”<\/p>\n

And now that Congress is threatening to pass legislation to block the port deal with the UAE, Bush is once again vowing a veto. A few things to consider:<\/p>\n

* Congress sees which way the winds are blowing and recognizes public concerns about the deal. The chances of lawmakers backing down now, in an election year, are slim.<\/p>\n

* Does Bush really want his first-ever veto to be about foreign management of key domestic ports?<\/p>\n

* At this point, based on public comments, there will probably be more than enough votes to override Bush’s veto, if it comes to that. It would be humiliating for the White House and make the “lame duck” label hard to avoid.<\/p>\n

Will the administration strike some kind of compromise here? Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, in defending his port deal with the United Arab Emirates, the president was unequivocal. “They ought to listen to what I have to say about this. They ought to look at the facts, and understand the consequences of what they’re going to do. But if they pass a law, I’ll deal with it, with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6677\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}