Should President Obama veto spending bills?

By: David Rogers

Would an old-fashioned, Bill Clinton-styled presidential veto help cut the Gordian Knot in the Senate?

There’s life after a veto, and as a former governor, Clinton seemed to relish it. He faced down a Republican-controlled Congress for six years, during which he successfully vetoed a broad array of appropriations bills over not just money but also policy riders.

Is it time now for President Barack Obama to come off the sidelines to do the same: for his own good and to buy some running room for the Democratic Senate which has protected him for most of his presidency?

These are questions raised by the latest appropriations pileup which has frustrated bipartisan efforts to restore some order this summer to the annual debate over spending bills to keep the government operating past September 30.

Appropriations Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) puts on a brave face. “We have not lost good will and I don’t want to lose momentum,” she said this week.

But momentum is exactly what’s been lost already, and going home for the July Fourth recess, the Senate has yet to move one of the 12 bills across the floor.

When members return, there will be 30 days left on the House calendar before the money runs out. And unless fortunes change quickly, Congress will slide back into the same rut where the entire government is put on a stopgap funding resolution until after the November elections.

Behind this paralysis are the contradictions of both parties.

Republicans insist that the last thing they want is another government shutdown. But the GOP then sets about to gum up the works with amendments which are veto bait for Obama and would guarantee a crisis if included in any continuing resolution after Labor Day.

Democrats are so risk-adverse that they seem forever in a defensive crouch—not wanting to vote on tough amendments before November’s elections and not wanting Obama to veto bills either.

“Less is more,” said one veteran Democratic observer. “If you can’t be for it, don’t do it. And you don’t get any points for being against the president if you are a Democrat.”

At this stage, four appropriations bills –impacting six Cabinet departments—are directly threatened by veto-bait amendments. Three more— funding five departments plus major science agencies— stalled last week in the ensuing tensions.

At the root of the immediate impasse is an otherwise popular $34.2 billion energy and water measure—which years back was always among the first of the annual bills to race through Congress.

It still commands bipartisan support, impacting water supplies for the drought-stricken West and a host of infrastructure projects which are a priority for individual Republican senators. But it’s also the lever chosen by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to challenge Obama and the Environmental Protection Agency on new rules to reduce carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants.

By offering his amendment as a member of Appropriations, McConnell gets around the standard hurdle of needing a supermajority on the floor. And with Democrats on the panel from energy states like Alaska and Louisiana, McConnell stands a good chance of inserting his language in the bill before it comes to the floor.

So much so that Mikulski abruptly pulled back from marking up the energy and water bill last Thursday. Hours later she paid the price when objections from McConnell derailed her hopes of moving ahead with three less controversial bills which had been packaged together with the support of her ranking Republican, Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby.

To be sure, McConnell is taking some license in crafting his amendment, which shows touches of Rube Goldberg.

He knows the EPA has no part of the energy and water bill. So, he would designate Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz as his referee and bar any EPA action until the secretary has certified that the proposed power plant rule will not drive up unemployment and utility costs.

“I cannot recall an amendment—in the 21 years I have been here—that is so much outside the jurisdiction of this subcommittee,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Cal.), clearly dismayed by the situation. But more important to her as the bill’s manager was the certainty of provoking a veto from the president.

“The amendment was a bill killer,” Feinstein said. “If it didn’t lead to defeat on the Senate floor it would have resulted in a White House veto… To put this on this bill and then have it vetoed which it would be seemed to me to be not the right way to go.”

Yet all signs show that this is a veto fight that Obama will almost certainly win with a good deal of public support behind him. This argues for the option of expediting energy and water to break the ice. That could then free up the three pending bills to move ahead as a first down payment toward some regular order.

Democrats will have the option still of striking McConnell’s amendment on the floor. Failing that, there’s little chance McConnell can get the two-thirds majority needed in both houses to overturn Obama. And his fellow Republicans like Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander will have to decide then if they truly want the bill they wrote in the first place with Feinstein.

As chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer—Feinstein’s California colleague— has been most vocal in resisting what she sees as McConnell’s end run around her jurisdiction. But the Kentucky Republican is not going away soon and looking like the victim in the current impasse already serves his political purposes at home.

Boxer’s ties with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) are a complicating factor. And at one level, the appropriations impasse serves Reid’s purposes since it shields his vulnerable Democrats from tough votes.

The real challenge for both sides in this political game is to look reasonable—so they can blame the other for failure.

Here Reid is enough of a realist to know that sooner or later the White House and Democrats must be prepared to “rip off the band aid” and have this fight. Republicans allied with Mikulski on Appropriations already believe it would be a step forward.

“It’s certainly better than where we are today,” said Shelby. If it comes to an Obama veto, he said, “that’s part of the process in our Constitution. “We used to do it. We did it all the time, and life went on.”

“That seems a fair way to operate,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), whose own environmental record suggests she might even oppose the GOP leader in committee. “Sen. McConnell would get a vote on a very legitimate issue that is timely. The president would have every opportunity to veto the bill.”

The Clinton record here is instructive. As president he had 36 regular vetoes, of which only two were overridden. He never lost in vetoing 14 appropriations bills. He is remembered most for those prior to Republicans shutting down the government in retaliation in 1995. But the battles continued long after. Months before leaving office, Clinton vetoed this same annual energy and water in October 2000 because of a legislative rider impacting the Army Corps of Engineers’ plans to update its operating manual for the Missouri River.

Obama has never shown the same appetite for the gritty details of appropriations. But in this case, the president begins from a point where the EPA enjoys a far better approval rating than Congress itself. And recent polling for the Wall Street Journal and NBC News suggests growing public support for the proposed carbon rule to address global warming.

The June survey conducted by Hart Research Associates and Public Opinion Strategies found that 57 percent of those questioned approved EPA’s effort even if it meant higher utility bills; 39 percent disapproved. That’s a much wider spread than the 48-43 split when a similar question was asked by the same poll in October 2009. And among younger men and women, there has been a decisive shift toward favoring action, even as Obama’s own approval rating has dropped in the same period.

A more detailed breakdown of the poll data —provided by Hart Research—shows that 62 percent of men under 50 would approve such a power plant rule, compared to 45 percent in 2009. Among women in the same age group, the numbers jumped to 67 percent approval, compared with 48 percent in 2009.

With so many energy states contested this year, Senate Democrats admit they are still nervous about the fight. National poll data means less than what’s happening on the ground in states like Louisiana and Arkansas. And support for such an EPA rule has actually dropped among older men who are more likely to vote in November.

But employment in the coal industry has dropped significantly since 1980, and Republican senators can’t ignore the fact that even in Republican-held House districts, the survey found support for the action on global warming.

For example, when read two quite detailed statements— outlining the pros and cons of the administration’s power plant rule— 50 percent of those surveyed in GOP districts agreed with supporters of rule, 44 percent disagreed.

And one certainty about Washington: it’s only going to get hotter between now and September 30.