"Congress is now spending money like a drunken sailor," said McCain, a former Navy officer, "and I've never known a sailor, drunk or sober, with the imagination that this Congress has."
He said growth of spending had been capped at 4 percent, but it was at least 8 percent higher. He said he will continue urging Bush to veto profligate spending bills. The president has not veto a single bill since he took office.
Asked if the president bears some responsibility for what is going on, McCain said:
"Yes, because I think that the president cannot say, as he has many times, that 'I'm going to tell Congress to enforce some spending discipline' and then not veto bills."
When John McCain is the conservative critic you know that the White House is more interested in politics than ideology. Bush's embrace of Karl Rove reminds me of Clinton's embrace of James Carville and Dick Morris. When you make moves designed on political gain at the expense of making moves designed on your vision, you eventually lose your way.
The reason the deficits in the 1990s were low was because a Republican Congress was unwilling to spend the money that Clinton wanted to spend. The relationship now isn’t adversarial enough. Other than the tax cut, I can think of few domestic bills that conservatives can get behind. We need a Republican to fight the war, but he’s selling out everywhere else to get re-elected.
I hated McCain’s campaign finance reform bill and his opposition to tax cuts, but the last few days has had me wondering if he wouldn’t have been a better choice for President. He wouldn’t have backed down to the terrorists either and he seems to be supporting better fiscal measures.
Bush could have proved the benefits of tax cuts if only he had cut spending. Now the tax cuts will forever be blamed for the deficits instead of the wanton spending increases. This administration needs to remind conservatives why we voted for it.
I was happy to see Bush do something as thoughtful as visiting the troops in Iraq. He’s a good man. But instead of using his popularity and political capital to strike a blow for fiscal reform, he decided to buy votes for the 2004 election. It was this kind of thinking that gave Bush’s father a conservative challenger in the primaries, and if we weren’t at war, Bush 43 would get one too.
One of the best criticisms of Clinton in the 1990s was that every move was calculated for effect. Bush's leadership in a war that Democrats are trying to make unpopular is commendable. But his domestic policy seems to reek of Clinton's. Whether seniors need prescription drugs isn't the question. The question is whether people who have far less money than many seniors should be made to pay for it. Neither Social Security nor Medicare will be available for the many people who fund the system now. Does President Bush expect younger Americans to get a second job to pay for all of this compassionate conservatism?
UPDATE: Freshman Conngressman Tom Feeney argued with Bush before the Medicare vote.
Well-placed sources said Bush hung up on freshman Rep. Tom Feeney after Feeney said he couldn’t support the Medicare bill. The House passed it by only two votes after Hastert kept the roll-call vote open for an unprecedented stretch of nearly three hours in the middle of the night.
Feeney, a former Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives whom many see as a rising star in the party, reportedly told Bush: “I came here to cut entitlements, not grow them.”
Sources said Bush shot back, “Me too, pal,” and hung up the phone.
If this story is true Bush is way out of line. We want to support his leadership on the war, but his country club Republican approach to domestic policy is too much. If Bush really came to Washington to cut entitlements too he could start by cutting one.
Republican aides said conservatives who voted against the bill, including Reps. Mike Pence (Ind.), John Culberson (Texas), Jeff Flake (Ariz.), Roscoe Bartlett (Md.) and Jim Ryun (Kan.), would suffer for their votes against the Medicare bill.
Leadership aides said those members “can expect to remain on the back bench” in the months ahead.
“Health savings accounts are the most dramatic reform of health care in 30 years,” Feehery said. “Conservatives said they all loved it, but once in the bill they forgot about it.”
Medicare is expanded to hell and back and we're supposed to be excited that the plan offers a modicum of free market initiatives. They control the White House and both chambers of Congress. Do you think the Republicans could have twisted the same arms to pass medical savings accounts without the $400 billion expansion? Instead, we're supposed to be proud that they got this one over on the Democrats who have no power at all.
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