Yesterday, the House and Senate adopted a $2.9 trillion budget resolution for the 2008 fiscal year, which starts October 1. The resolution provides $2.9 billion in spending for next year and projects a federal budget surplus of $41 billion in 2012. Budget resolutions are non-binding and do not go to the President to be signed into law. Their one self-executing feature is the limit they impose on so-called ‘discretionary spending’ -- all annually appropriated federal spending; not mandatory, Iraq war-related, or emergency appropriations funding. The $956 billion discretionary total under the plan will go through the 12-step congressional appropriations process where a dozen bills approved by Congress are sent to the president for his signature.

But President Bush and OMB Director Rob Portman have launched some pre-emptive strikes against the budget plan – threatening to veto all of the 12 appropriations bills that exceed discretionary caps -- $933 billion in the aggregate -- set out in the budget that Bush submitted to Congress back in February. And some GOP members of Congress have made it clear that they intend to gather a veto-override bloc to prevent the Democrats from pushing through the roughly $23 billion in education, children's health and other domestic budget increases. Does this make political sense?

For one thing, the credentials of the president and the GOP-controlled Congress are a tad sullied on the fiscal score, because during their six years of unfettered rule, 2001 through 2006, they added three trillion dollars to the national debt, raising it from about $5.5 to $8.5 trillion. But if Bush was so vigilant about the debt that all those years, why did he never once issue a veto of a single discretionary spending increase proposals appropriations bill. As Senate Budget Committee chair Kent Conrad (D-ND) put it:

After racking up more than $3 trillion of new debt under its watch, the Bush administration now pretends to be fiscally disciplined by threatening to veto appropriations bills because they include investments in priorities like education and veterans’ health care… That is as cynical as it is shortsighted.

But for whatever reason, Bush and a small (four member) band of supporters in Congress are prepared to go to great lengths, letting loose with a round of 12 indiscriminant vetos and veto-sustaining votes, to make sure that $23 billion out of a total of close to $1 trillion in discretionary spending in both Bush’s and Congress’ budget plans never gets spent.

The politics of the GOP approach look dubious indeed. That would hardly be news. But imagine being a GOP member running for re-election next year, arguing to sustain a Bush veto of the Veterans Affairs appropriations bill and having to counter this sentiment expressed by Conrad after passage of the budget resolution yesterday:

We have all witnessed the scandal of Walter Reed. We’re saying in this budget document, “Never again.” We are going to keep the promise to this nation’s veterans.

Already, the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee cleared its $36 billion FY08 bill clear this morning. Call it veto-bait: that bill runs comes in at $2 billion over Bush's request. On the other hand, homeland security funding a mere six percent greater than what Bush called for may prove to be just too popular for the president to carry out his threat.

And that is merely the first of 12 spending bills. This year, last instead of first on the list of appropriations bills scheduled for floor action is the Defense bill. Will the faster-acting subcommittees, disregarding Bush’s threats and leaving budget crumbs for the last spending bills to reach the floor, set the Defense bill up for a Bush veto on the grounds of insufficient spending?