More Bush Budget Bluster

President Bush has issued the 5th veto of his presidency just days after having his 4th veto overridden by Congress.

Bush rejected a $606 billion bill to fund education, health and labor programs, complaining that it is too expensive and is larded with pork.

Wow! $606 billion! That’s a lot of money. Those porkers! But wait! How big a difference is there between this bill and the amount that Bush wants to spend?

He said that the bill spends nearly $10 billion more than his proposed budget

Nearly $10 billion?!? Bush is vetoing this bill and posing as a fiscal conservative for less than $10 billion? That’s chickenfeed compared to the amount that Bush wants to spend in Iraq!

Why $10 billion is so small that the Bush team can’t even keep track of it over in Iraq. That’s about the same amount that they lost track of last year. I guess Bush is going to make up for the money they lost track of in Iraq by chopping it out of domestic spending bills back home. Thanks, Mr. President! You’re incompentent and we suffer for it!

Oh, and then there is this...

At the same time, Bush signed a $459 billion annual Defense Department spending bill that increases the Pentagon's budget 9.5 percent to fund operations other than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A 10 percent increase (nearly $5 billion) on military spending NOT RELATED to Iraq and Afghanistan. And that is not counting the $200 billion we are spending in Iraq this year alone! So who is spending money like a teenager with his parents’ credit card?

The education-health bill he rejected included entitlement spending for programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, as well as $150.7 billion in discretionary spending. Congress sought to restore $3.6 billion that Bush had cut from those discretionary programs in his proposed budget and add $6.2 billion on top of that, for a net 4.3 percent increase in spending. Among the additions was more money for Bush's own No Child Left Behind school-accountability program.

So Democrats are trying to add back in funds for Bush’s own education program and Bush is vetoing it.

Oh, and Bush is decrying the earmarks in the bill even though some of the biggest pieces of pork are sponsored by Republicans. I suppose if the Democrats wanted to be mean they could make up the $10 billion difference by stripping out all the earmarks sponsored by Republican lawmakers.