King George Denied at Last!

Chalk one up for the good guys. 

Last week, in his ongoing effort to quash any meaningful piece of legislation that the Democrats try to pass, George W. Bush’s veto of a popular water projects bill was overridden by the U.S. House of Representatives today. The veto will enact legislation that would authorize $23 billion for nearly 900 projects across the United States, including flood control, transportation upgrades and construction of new water control infrastructure.

The House voted 361-54 to override the president’s veto. The Senate is expected to take up the water bill as early as Wednesday.

Bush cited too much “pork-barrel” spending in the bill.

This coming from the president who is the unprecedented heavy-weight champion of the world of peacetime pork…

If a similar swell of support occurs in the Senate, it would mark the first time Congress has mustered enough votes to override King George. 

Bush has vetoed five bills during his time in office…four against Democrats of course.

The President chose to stand in the way of this bipartisan legislation, this overwhelming bipartisan legislation, in an attempt to claim the mantle of fiscal responsibility,” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer from Maryland. “This is the wrong bill to have done so.” 

“No one is surprised that this veto is over-ridden,” White House spokesman Tony Fratto said. “We understand that members of Congress are going to support the projects in their districts. Budgeting is about making choices and defining priorities – it doesn’t mean you can have everything,” he said. “This bill doesn’t make the difficult choices; it says we can fund every idea out there.”

Yeah, $10 million for flood control in Mississippi and Louisiana is clearly unreasonable.

The bill would provide funding to do coastal restoration in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina and improve the Florida Everglades. It also would include new locks to speed up freight traffic on the Mississippi River. Farm and business groups have campaigned for years to expand navigational capacity on the upper Mississippi, where many of the locks and dams date from the Depression era, in order to remain competitive in the global agriculture trade market.

Again, unreasonable in the eyes of the Bush administration.

Bush and Democrats are at a seemingly unresolvable impass over the Iraq war, and have been playing political volleyball with SCHIP. This override, if for no other reason, has breathed some life back into our system of checks and balances but moreover, has demonstrated to King George that we are not heading down the slippery slope of dictatorial control yet…not yet.