Maybe I'll have to stop referring to Tom Daschle as The Ghoul.
Daschle is becoming something of an unlikely hero of mine of late, as he attempts (with some success) to block some of the more egregious legislative efforts of the Republican Congress. And I say this as a Republican myself.

The aptly named Omnibus Spending Bill (a bill sweeping all manner of truly offensive local pork under the rug known as miscellany) passed the House Monday, supposedly providing for the continued financial operations of government but also including such essentials as changes to media ownership rules, overtime pay rules, and yet another extension of unemployment benefits. Daschle & Co blocked the bill's passage and let the Senate get out of town without voting on it till at least their January return to business, and hopefully not then either without some modification. The bill contains $7.5B for 7,000 "earmark" local projects. This bill, pork and all, increases Federal spending by "only" 3%, a much smaller increase than in recent years, but it's still faster than inflation has been.

This does seem to me to be a strong case for the line item veto. And not the watered down, legislatively enacted "allowance" that Congress unconstitutionally extended to the President in 1995 (later overturned by the Supreme Court), but a genuine Constitutional provision for one to allow individual items to be struck down so bills which are overall beneficial can be passed. I assume there's at least some good somewhere in the bill.

Nothing better illustrates the perverse political calculus involved leading me to support Daschle than the unemployment extension issue. I wanted the bill blocked temporarily to encourage some cleanup to a bill all too laden with wasteful spending. Daschle blocked it because it didn't contain enough wasteful spending in the form of more free money for the unemployed. Now unemployment benefits relate peculiarly to actual unemployment insofar as there is a marked tendency for anyone receiving benefits to continue not finding a job and to continue receiving benefits. According to the Wall Street Journal, (link for subscribers only) most recipients of unemployment benefits don't actually find a job until the final week before their benefits run out. Another extension, while charitably generous, would keep more people unemployed longer and into an election year to boot (perhaps an estimated 0.3% increase to the unemployment rate according the the Journal article cited above). Not to accuse Daschle of wanting to artificially create unemployment to hurt George Bush's re-election bid or anything, but I'd like to see Bush re-elected by presiding over a sound economic recovery and a budget which doesn't include all manner of Congressional pork intended simply to buy votes for incumbents.

We as a nation seem to be profoundly unserious. While fighting an existential war we quibble and bitch over carrier deck landings and the real purpose of holiday visits to Iraq, applaud Al Gore when he says unblushingly that the current war is the "worst foreign policy mistake" in our nation's history, and applaud serious, flagrant untruths such as calling the present economy the worst since the Great Depression. I'm sure this last is just an exhumation of the very same theme we heard during the 1992 presidential election, and it's about as true now as it was then; but since it was successful in garnering an election victory, truth need not be considered. Which is fortunate for those who repeat the lie, since it is not remotely true.

Meanwhile, with the largest deficit in history (some of which, eg War on Terror, and in my opinion, the War in Iraq, is justified, yes), Congressmen insert unrelated pork items into bills totalling $7.5B and applaud their own restraint for, I guess, not frivolously spending even more than that; and enact horrible and uncontrollable Medicare expansions. All to buy votes, to sustain their own venality and love of power. I refuse to believe that in the midst of a war against an enemy bent on our utter extermination, the most pressing issue facing the United States today is whether to give free pills to senior citizens. It's disappointing, to say the least.

Call me crazy, but delaying this bill to allow unemployment benefit extensions to expire and encourage a rethinking of all those pork projects seems like a good start.