American Duties 6 of 11

Bush on federal budget

QUESTION: You talked earlier about the importance of spending discipline in the federal budget. But you went your entire first term without vetoing a single spending bill, even know you had a lot of tough talk on that issue in your first term.

And I'm wondering this time around, what are you going to do to convince Congress you really are serious about cutting federal spending? Will you veto spending bills this time?

BUSH: Here's what happened. I submitted a budget and Congress hit our number, which is a tribute to Senator Hastert and -- I mean, Senator Frist and Speaker Hastert's leadership.

In other words, we worked together, we came up with a budget like we're doing now, we went through the process of asking our agencies,

Can you live with this, and if you don't like it counterpropose?

And then we came up with a budget that we thought was necessary and we took it to the leadership and they accepted the budget. And they passed bills that met our budget targets.

So how can you veto a series appropriations bills if the Congress has done what you've asked them to do?

Now, I think the president ought to have the line item veto because within the appropriations bills there may be differences of opinion on how the money is being spent.

But overall, they have done a superb job of working with the White House to meet the budget numbers we've submitted.

And so the appropriations bill I just signed was one that conformed with the budget agreement we had with the United States Congress.

And I really do appreciate the leadership, not only Speaker Hastert and Senator Frist, but also the Budget Committee chairman. I talked to Senator Gregg this morning, as a matter of fact. He'll be heading the Budget Committee in the United States Senate.

And we're working very closely with members of Congress as we develop the budget.

And it's going to be a tough budget, no question about it. And it's a budget that I think will send the right signal to the financial markets and to those concerned about our short-term deficits.

As well, we have to deal with the long-term deficit issues. That's the issue that John Roberts talked about, which is the unfunded liabilities when it comes to some of the entitlement programs.

OPINION

I always found it interesting how on graphs it would show Clinton's two terms having such a large increase in money and before it had been decreasing. And following Clinton's presidency, Bush came in and created a deficit. For that, he lost his title of a compassionate conservative because he spent money fiercely. I don't think our country can handle his crusade for all countries to have freedom because it costs so much. We need to pace ourselves.