Liberals Lose Big in Budget Battles

For a lame duck leader, President Bush sure has the congressional liberals right where he wants them...and they're not happy:

This much is clear: Democrats in Congress buckled under pressure from the White House to hold spending near the administration’s specified limit, and they’re poised to give the president more war money with no strings attached.

But the buckling didn’t stop there.

Democratic policy priorities that liberals hoped would be included in the omnibus spending legislation were also left on the cutting-room floor.

Under a veto threat, Democrats removed the reversal of a long-standing anti-abortion provision, abandoned long-sought provisions that would have loosened travel and trade restrictions on Cuba and deleted a line item demanded by unions that would have required federal contractors to pay union wages in disaster areas like New Orleans.

What remains is a smattering of modest policy advances and spending increases on health care, education and transportation that Democrats are touting as the appropriations bill makes its way to the president.

While Democratic leaders have been forced to make the difficult concessions that will enable Congress to adjourn before Christmas, liberals are starting to snipe away, believing their party caved in too easily to an unpopular president.

“We should have sent him more appropriations bills and made him veto all of them,” said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). “We’re letting him off easy. … That’s all I’ll say.”

Well, Tom, had your party not been so committed to over 300 investigations and hearings on what you considered Bush's past sins, you might have actually gotten some thing done.