Democrats prepare veto response
Bush objects to timetable for Iraq withdrawal
WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. David Obey says congressional Democrats are considering a number of responses to President Bush’s expected veto of a $124.2 billion emergency spending bill that cleared Congress Thursday.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Bush’s veto “will be very soon,” but she couldn’t predict the date. “Obviously the president has said that we need to get the process over with, in terms of them sending him a bill and him vetoing it so that we can take the next step,” she said.
The Senate approved the package 51-46 on a mostly party-line vote with Democratic Sens. Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold supporting passage. The House approved the bill a day earlier also on a mostly party-line vote of 218-208. Wisconsin’s three Republican lawmakers — Tom Petri, Jim Sensenbrenner and Paul Ryan — joined all but two members of their party in opposition.
Bush has said he will veto the bill so long as it contains a timetable on Iraq, as well as $20 billion in spending added by Democrats.
Ryan issued a statement expressing his opposition to including unrelated domestic spending in an emergency spending package, even though some have merit. He also opposes the deadline for troop withdrawal from Iraq.
Among those unrelated items: a one-month extension of a price subsidy program for dairy farmers that’s due to expire Aug. 30 and a 30-month extension of Wisconsin’s SeniorCare prescription drug program for low-income seniors that is scheduled to end June 30.
Rep. Steve Kagen, D-Appleton, who won election last November as an opponent to the war, said the legislation demands “accountability from our own administration and from the Iraqi government, as we begin to move in a new direction.”
Feingold, one of the Senate’s most outspoken opponents of the Iraq war, said after the vote, “Congress has acted on its mandate from the American people, and the president should not ignore these calls for change.”
As chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Obey, D-Wausau, already has been meeting with other Democratic leaders to craft their next step and told reporters that one option — a much smaller spending bill that would fund the Iraq war for 60 days — “is not off the table.”
“But no option makes sense if the president thinks he can dictate a settlement on his own terms,” Obey said. He would not predict how long it might take Congress to send another bill to the White House.
“We shouldn’t have to turn around another product,” he said. “The president keeps saying he’ll sit down and talk but he won’t negotiate. Nothing is going to happen until he sits down and recognizes that he’s president, not king.”
Obey was interviewed after participating in a press conference with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.; and other party leaders to urge President Bush to change his position.
“This bill for the first time gives the president of the United States an exit strategy which up to this time he has not had,” Obey said at the news conference. “It also gives him every dollar that he asked for military spending.”
— The Associated Press
By BRIAN TUMULTY
Press-Gazette Washington bureau
