Bush a Fiscal Conservative?

Who does Bush think he's kidding? No one should ever believe this president is fiscally responsible. He took a budget surplus and devolved it into the LARGEST DEFICIT IN US HISTORY.

He has flushed away more than half a trillion dollars in Iraq, yet he decides to draw a line in the sand when it comes to extending health care to children of 'working poor' families.

Even George Bush knows this was an embarrassing veto. How do I know that? Because all his other veto's were done with camera's flashing. This one took place in the shadows, behind closed doors -- where HE belongs.

Dan Froomkin writes:

The three previous times President Bush vetoed a bill, he did so in public.

In July 2006 and this past June, he surrounded himself with supportive anti-abortion activists who welcomed his veto of stem-cell legislation. In May, when he vetoed legislation that would have established a timeline for troop withdrawal from Iraq, he did so in a televised address that rallied his fellow Republicans.

But this morning's veto of a bipartisan bill that would have dramatically expanded children's health insurance came behind closed doors, with no fanfare or visuals.

Who, after all, would have cheered him this time?

Exactly!

And hopefully this stupid move will translate to more Republicans sent packing in the 2008 election, since they are preventing an override vote.

A Washington Post/ABC News poll taken last week found that 72 percent of Americans supported the legislation. [...]

"With Democrats eager to tar the White House as insensitive to children, many observers think the President couldn't have picked a worse fight with which to prove his credentials. But regardless of the immediate political cost over a possible veto of SCHIP, these are fights the President welcomes in his last 16 months in office. After the largest expansion of government since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society four decades ago, he is bending over backward to show committed budget hawks that he is really one of them. Earlier this week the White House went so far as to say that the President was making a stand on SCHIP because it was a 'philosophic issue.'

Give me a break.

If Republicans were smart, they would tell this president "No Deal" and override this terribly mean-spirited veto.