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President threatens a veto for FY 2008 Budget Resolution

Submitted by Shelley Joyce on Tue, 05/29/2007 - 10:54am.

The President has threatened to veto any domestic appropriations bill that exceeds his own spending requests for FY 2008 in order to prevent increased spending on education, health care and other domestic programs.

 In a letter to lawmakers, the President's Budget Director, Rob Portman, said the Administration opposes the Budget Resolution that is expected to authorize about $20 billion more for the fiscal year beginning in October than the White House has requested. 

 While the President cannot veto the Budget Resolution itself, which needs only the approval of Congress, he can veto any number of the 12 separate spending bills that will be needed to implement it. The veto threat may signal the start of a highly contentious battle over spending between the White House and the Congress which could eventually lead to a shutdown of the government or leave agencies to operate without clear spending guidelines.

 OMB Director Rob Portman accused Democrats of doing little to rein in "the unsustainable growth in entitlement spending" in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  Medicare discretionary spending is not the Administration's only complaint with the emerging Budget Resolution. Going after both taxes and entitlements in his letter, Portman also criticized plans to let some tax cuts expire, saying the resulting tax increase "would threaten the economy and job growth of the past four years."

(Taken from Disability Policy Collaboration, a partnership of The Arc and United Cerebral Palsy, Capitol Insider, Vol. 12, issue 19, May 14, 2007)

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