Bush Blasts Dems Plan for Biggest Tax Increase in US history
By JESSE THOMPSON, Associated Press Writer
Sat Sep 29, 2007
WASHINGTON - President Bush on Saturday signed a bill to prevent a government shutdown, but not without complaint. Bush lambasted the Democrats who control Congress for sending him the stopgap measure while they continue to work on more than a dozen spending bills funding the day-to-day operations of 15 Cabinet departments.
"Congress failed in its most basic responsibility," the president said in his weekly radio address.
The bills are tied up because Democrats want to add $23 billion for domestic programs to Bush's $933 billion request for the approximately one-third of the federal budget funded by the yearly spending bills. Bush has threatened vetoes on most of the bills, eager to re-establish his party's reputation as the place to go for fiscal discipline.
The president said Democrats are planning the "biggest tax increase in American history" to pay for the new spending.
"Earlier this year congressional leaders promised to show that they could be responsible with the people's money," he said. "Unfortunately they seem to have chosen the path of higher spending."
The new fiscal year begins Monday, and something had to be done before then or the government's authority to spend money would run out.
While calling this situation "disappointing," Bush extended a bit of an olive branch to Congress. He expressed his thanks that lawmakers passed a clean temporary measure with no new spending or policies, and that the measure does the same for a popular health insurance program covering children from low-income families.
The stopgap spending bill will keep Cabinet departments running at current levels through mid-November, extend financing for the children's insurance program, and dip deeply into a $70 billion fund for Pentagon operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Such stopgap funding bills are routine and have been needed every year since 1994. But for the first time in five years, not one of the 12 annual appropriations bills have become law by the Oct. 1 deadline.
The children's insurance program now covers 6.6 million children from modest-income families not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. Democrats want to expand it. Their plan would add $35 billion, funded by new tobacco taxes.
Bush wants a $5 billion increase in the program, and took a fresh dig at the Democrats on the issue.
"Congressional leaders have put forward an irresponsible plan that would dramatically expand this program beyond its original intent," he said. "And they know I will veto it." |
