Posted on 02/22/2004 8:05:00 PM PST by FairOpinion
WASHINGTON, Feb 20 (Reuters) - The White House has been reaching out to conservative groups to quell a rebellion over government spending and budget deficits, hoping to shore up President George W. Bush's political base in an election year.
Conservative leaders who have taken part in private White House meetings in recent weeks said on Friday officials have promised to all but freeze non-defense spending, and assured them Bush will follow through on his threat to veto major highway legislation if Congress refuses to scale it back.
The price tag on a six-year highway and transportation bill stalled in the House of Representatives is $375 billion while a Senate highway bill calls for spending $318 billion. The White House has proposed a $256 billion measure.
"Bush has been very attentive to the critique from the right," said Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, a politically powerful conservative group -- offering tentative praise where once he talked openly of a brewing rebellion.
But if the White House does not follow through, said Heritage Foundation vice president for government relations, Michael Franc, "all bets are off."
"This is not something you can address with a handshake, a pat on the back and an invitation to the White House. You address it by actions," he added.
The White House is used to being attacked by Democrats, but it came as something of a shock when fellow Republicans broke ranks over growth in government spending, hurting Bush at a time when his job approval numbers were already falling.
Conservatives from the Cato Institute criticized the president for overseeing a nearly 25 percent surge in spending over the last three years -- the fastest pace since the Johnson administration of the mid-1960s.
Others singled out his failure to lay out concrete plans to reduce the federal budget deficit, projected at a record $521 billion this year. Even some of Bush's Republican allies in the House warned of a backlash against his budget priorities.
In what one administration official called a "concerted effort," senior White House officials have been meeting with Republicans in Congress to smooth over their differences.
Joel Kaplan, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, has been meeting with conservative groups, an aide said. The effort may be paying off.
"Stung by a lot of the criticism from the right, Bush is going to be steadfast about sticking to his spending targets," said Moore, who warned in January that a rebellion among conservatives was brewing.
Now Moore says, "They clearly are trying to reach out. I think the complaints of conservatives have been heeded."
Heritage analyst Brian Riedl once described the mood of conservatives as "angry."
Now Riedl says, "I think the White House is definitely moving in the right direction," though he added, "There's a lot of work ahead of them."
William Niskanen, the chairman of the libertarian Cato Institute who advised former President Ronald Reagan, said he has personally not seen much of an outreach effort. "We'll have to see" what the White House does, he said.
Electing a Democrat president is going to destroy the fiber of this country sovereignty as we know it will be rendered mute and irrelivant any dem will tell you the UN is better for our country than our own form of government so when your guns are gone and your beer is outlawed when you find the simplest pleasures in life to be illegal under world court law sit back and think of just how really bad it was under G.W.B. because once you vote you cnat take that back and once you give the country back over to the dems youll never have the country you want your children to live in ! one of freedom and sovereignty.
A life-long Independent and I were talking about the "Nader Factor" yesterday.
His strange perceptions were real to him when he said to me, "The Republicans are paying Nader to run so they can win the White House." He was serious.
The political mindset in this country is fast approaching the mayhem of the height of Viet Nam.
Correct. Those fleeing the oppression of England never dreamed their descendent would GIVE AWAY the country they gave their lives and fortunes to create.
"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors; they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men." - Samuel Adams
The government is out whoring on us - in broad daylight (with witnesses) - and expecting us to believe the ghonorea is not contagious.
That's true --- but Bush would have had this election won by a landslide if it weren't for his crazy spending, amnesty talk, and globalization of our jobs.
Exactly --- it didn't work. It did get the 'hispanic' vote to turn heavily democrat too --- 80% of that vote went to Clinton.
Sad because in 2000, the Republicans won the White House, Congress, the Senate, and many of the state Governors. It should not have to be a close election --- alot of spending could have been cut, we should have turned this country around faster from the Clinton agenda but that didn't happen. Government social program spending is higher than ever.
Why? It's already increased the inflow. No one who saw the pictures of the very jubilent Vicente Fox high-fiving his fellow elites over Bush's proposals can believe that anyone thinks the guest workers would be going back home in 3 years --- obviously that's now how Fox heard it --- or he wouldn't have been so jubilant.
That would mean putting Americans first --- before foreign citizens. Just like $1 billion was included for foreign citizens in the government health care program that used to be for American seniors --- $1 billion that could instead be used to save rural hospitals that are closing must be used to provide free care for people who choose to come here illegally to get it.
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