President Bush is unlikely to defy Congress on spending billions of dollars earmarked for pet projects, but he will probably insist that lawmakers provide more justification for such earmarks in the future, administration officials said Monday.
For those who haven’t been following this story, the earmarks in question weren’t actually part of the bill sent to President Bush but were instead inserted into committee reports with the Democrat leadership arrogantly assuming that Bush would sign the legislation and the Treasury would fund the appropriations anyway. Unfortunately for them, someone was paying attention and fiscally conservative groups have been trying to get Bush to refuse funding.
So why isn’t Bush doing that? Who knows. One would hope that if he’s doing this he’s made a deal for Democrat support on something else. Like maybe some significant tax cuts so his administration can go out on a high point.