Bush 'itching' to veto spending bills, aide says

Congress could be headed for a fiscal 2003 appropriations "train wreck," but President Bush is "itching" to use his veto pen and will not allow lawmakers to resolve their differences by adding extra dollars to spending bills and then clearing out of town, a top Bush aide vowed Friday.

Speaking at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, White House Legislative Affairs Director Nicholas Calio warned of several struggles ahead. Noting labor is ready to step up its activity on presidential trade negotiating authority, Calio said he is concerned about the prospects for the bill.

A decision Bush wants on establishing a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada is now "a very tough vote," Calio said. "The lobbying effort for people who support the storage at Yucca Mountain needs to increase significantly because the opponents are very, very active." And he reasserted Bush's threat to veto a fiscal 2002 supplemental appropriations bill if its cost is too high.

But Calio insisted he is optimistic that much can get done this year. He said Bush's top priorities are creating a Homeland Security Department, finishing the trade and energy bills, making last year's tax cut permanent and passing terrorism insurance legislation.

But in a crowded session with little progress so far on the appropriations front, Bush is "not going to be bought off" by agreeing to new spending. "You will not spend money to get out of town, plain and simple--that's not how it's going to work," Calio warned. But he added, "Nobody's going to shut down the government."

Calio said the House-passed budget resolution "ought to be the spending limit." Calio wondered whether the slow pace--and what he expects will be a Senate effort to hold up the 2003 Defense spending bill--was part of "a strategy to try to create leverage for more spending."

Noting recent talk that Congress is "not taking veto threats seriously on spending issues," Calio said to Bush's skeptics, "Try him." Bush, Calio said, "is actually getting a little itchy about it, says he would like to get the feel of it, try it out."

If Congress wants to test Bush's resolve, it should send him the Senate supplemental spending bill, which Bush opposes. However, pressed about whether Bush would veto final legislation if its price tag exceeded the lower level of the House passed bill, Calio would say only, "We think the House number's a good number."

Calio laid out the struggle for trade negotiating authority in stark terms, urging proponents to counter a renewed union effort. "The labor unions are up and running again, they're targeting key [legislators]," Calio said. "Right now, there's a whole lot of misery left in this process." But Calio appeared to try to pave the way for compromise, saying the differences that separate the House and Senate versions "are not that great."