President should stand his ground

Like kids steering the shopping cart to the candy section and dumping in whole boxes and trays while mom is busy elsewhere, congressional Democrats seem to have hoped that -- with Christmas approaching -- President Bush would back down on his threat to veto any domestic allocations above his targeted budget cap.

They've been so busy, in fact, that their cart contains about $22 billion worth of extra goodies.

But now, as it appears the president and most Republicans intend to stand firm in a bid to salvage their tarnished reputation for fiscal sanity, Democrats have started to buckle.

How about splitting the difference, they ask. Just $11 billion worth of candy?

True to form, the year-old Democratic majority couldn't even wait for an answer to that proposal before they were caught larding up that "$11 billion" with another $7 billion in "emergency" add-ons, including money to help southeastern drought victims, heating subsidies for reliably Democratic northeastern bailiwicks (cold New England winters seem to be "unexpected emergencies" the same way "bad weather" caused unexpected poor harvests in the Soviet Union, 74 years in a row), and more dollars for the Women, Infants and Children program.

Oh, and more funds to supposedly improve security along the Mexican border -- which sounds good till you realize Democrats keep adding language that no fence ever needs to be actually, you know ... built.

Time has grown so short that Democrats now propose to heap all these goodies into one "omnibus" spending package. Fortunately, Republicans -- who might not mind seeing majority Democrats go home without much in the way of new spending "accomplishments" to brag about -- seem wise to the risk of buying one huge Christmas pudding without knowing what's hidden inside.

Typically, such "omnibus" bills are loaded with parochial pork, and run through the grinder so quickly that no one even gets a chance to read them.

"I haven't seen anything good ever come out of an omnibus," Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "It's typically an invitation to the all-you-can-eat pork buffet and I don't know why anybody would want to participate in such a process."

The bad news is that the president's chief of staff, Joshua Bolten, and Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, met Wednesday with top Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, to explore whether a spending deal is possible.

The good news is that departing Senate GOP Whip Trent Lott of Mississippi reports, "The president isn't going to go along with an excessive spending package."

Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio and other leading House Republicans say Mr. Bush should stick by his guns, refusing to sign any bill that goes above his request for domestic programs. They promise Republicans will sustain any veto of a Democratic spending bill, and they came away from a White House meeting Tuesday optimistic that Mr. Bush would stick to his position.

Let's hope so.

"This is the spending fight we've anticipated all year," says Rep. Blunt, the second-ranking House Republican. "There's no reason to lay down a winning hand."

Even some Democrats see it that way.

"The same upper hand the president has had in previous standoffs he has in this standoff as well," sighs Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D.

Democrats seem to have an unending capacity to be shocked when it turns out the president means what he says. When he does that, about their only recourse is to whine (in the words of Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J.) "This is a president and a party who say, 'No, no, no,' when it comes to investing in our families."

Get a clue, Sen. Menendez: We all want to "invest" more in our families. To do so, we need fewer government "programs," and more of our own pay left in our paychecks.

The president must continue to stand his ground.