"Respect My Authoritah!!!!"

President Irrelevant tries to become revelant again.

President Bush today vetoed a bill that would have provided $150.7 billion for education, health care, job training and other domestic programs.

Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, said the measure exceeded the president’s budget request by nearly $10 billion and included some 2,000 items designating money for lawmakers’ pet projects.

“He will ask Congress to take out the pork and reduce the overall spending level and return it to him quickly,” Ms. Perino said as the president flew here from Washington, for speeches to business and community leaders.

Which is perfectly consistent with his principled call for the Republican-led Congress to remove wasteful spending projects from their I can't even finish this sentence.

The defense appropriations bill, by the way, got passed, even though it's FAR more bloated ($459 billion dollars), because we can't have defense contractors going hungry this holiday season. That bill included a stopgap measure for most federal agencies, so we aren't facing a government shutdown until mid-December. Mind you that the last Congress passed ZERO of their spending bills last year, remember that when you hear talk of the "do-nothing Congress."

Representative David R. Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, denounced Mr. Bush for rejecting the health and education bill, which embodies the values and priorities of the Democrats who now control Congress.

“The only reason the president vetoed this bill is pure politics,” Mr. Obey said.

“The same president who is asking us to spend another $200 billion on the misguided war in Iraq and is insisting on providing $60 billion in tax cuts next year to folks who make over a million bucks a year” is “now refusing to provide a $6 billion increase to crucial domestic investments in education, health care, medical research and worker protections that will make the country stronger,” Mr. Obey said.

It's something that this Congress had better get used to - the President doesn't give a crap about anyone making less money than he does.