The Budget Battle Book

Nothing like starting out your (pre-Christmas-week) Monday morning with a federal budget fight, right? Okay, maybe that’s only true here in Washington.

Anyway, it looks like the long-gestating budget battle is about to kick into high gear — or the closest Congress will get to it during a holiday.  After failing to pass any of the appropriations bills, all of which were met with veto threats by President Bush due to overspending, the Democrats have released a draft of an omnibus budget bill that combines all 12 spending bills into a single piece of legislation.  There have been numerous skirmishes between the parties over spending throughout the year, with Bush and the Republicans trying, if not entirely successfully, to reclaim some measure of credibility with fiscal conservatives.

And, at least in some sense, it looks like the GOP has won this time out. CQ Politics, for example, says that it’s a "victory" for the administration because the Democrats’ bill does not exceed Bush’s total spending cap.  Naturally, however, the Democrats managed to cut down spending to Bush’s level by front-loading the bill with  Democratic priorities and provisions.  In fact, it seems Congressional Democrats have actually increased the number of earmarks in the bill.

NRO’s David Freddoso points to a press release from Sen. Jim DeMint on some of the junk included in the omnibus:

• Earmarks: Instead of reducing the number of pork projects in the federal budget, the bill drives the number of earmarks up from last year. The bill contains over 8,000 earmarks, bringing the total for 2008 up to over 10,000 earmarks compared to just 2,658 in 2007.
• Spending Gimmicks: Instead of cutting wasteful spending out of the bill to bring its cost down to the President’s level, the bill uses budget tricks and gimmicks to hide at least $14 billion in extra domestic spending.
• Policy Riders: Instead of limiting the package to spending needed to fund government operations, the bill includes unrelated policy items. Many of these riders are backed by special interests, such as organized labor, and could not win passage on their own.

So this, it seems, is the strategy of the big-spenders: Make a few concessions on overall spending, but pump the budget full of earmarks, pork, and concessions to special interests.  The media will call it a "victory" for the White House and leave fiscally conservative legislators little room to maneuver.