In First Bush Veto Override, Senate Enacts Water Bill
By DAVID STOUT
nytimes.com
WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 — The Senate voted overwhelmingly today for a popular $23 billion water projects measure affecting locales across the country, thereby handing President Bush his first defeat in a veto showdown with Congress.
The vote was 79 to 14, far more than the two-thirds needed to override the veto that President Bush cast last Friday. On Tuesday, the House voted by 361 to 54 in favor of the bill, also well over the two-thirds barrier to nullify the veto.
Enactment of the water projects measure had been widely expected, despite the veto, given the importance of the bill to individual districts and, of course, the lawmakers that represent them. The measure embraces huge endeavors like restoration of the Florida Everglades and relief to hurricane-stricken communities along the Gulf Coast and smaller ones like sewage-treatment plants and dams important to smaller constituencies.
The veto of the water bill was the fifth cast by Mr. Bush, and the first to be overridden by Congress. The president and some Republicans had complained that the bill was wasteful. Some critics said the measure did not do enough to reform the Army Corps of Engineers, which would handle much of the work, and was larded with political pork.
But, as the comments of lawmakers made clear today, pork is in the eye of the beholder.
The bill “is one of the few areas where we actually do something constructive,” Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the Republican whip, told The Associated Press. He said the bill contains “good, deserved, justified projects.”
Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, also argued in favor of overriding the veto. “This bill is enormously important, and it has been a long time coming,” Mr. Vitter said.
Mr. Lott and Mr. Vitter side with President Bush far more often than they oppose him. But both senators represent areas that were hard-hit by Hurricane Katrina, and their votes to override Mr. Bush’s veto underscored the adage that politics is basically local, or at least regional.
Then, too, the bill was the first water-projects measure in several years, so there was plenty of pent-up demand for money in locales from coast to coast.
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