The Hill: Bush now has taste for vetoes: lobbyist

The Hill
Bush now has taste for vetoes: lobbyist
By Jim Snyder
June 05, 2007

Appropriations lobbyist Gerald Warburg has the following message for clients awaiting federal money: Expect vetoes.

After years during which the administration saw nary a bill it didn’t like, the president’s efforts to remain relevant and his success in keeping a timetable for withdrawal out of the Iraq spending bill by using his veto pen likely will set up a series of budget battles this year.

“I’ve told my clients to expect a veto on every single [bill], at least once,” said Warburg, executive vice president at Cassidy & Associates, which specializes in appropriations lobbying.

By vetoing spending measures, the administration can rebuild credibility with a conservative base unhappy that the White House has used the veto so sparingly. And the president, generally unpopular and losing support even among congressional Republicans, can shape bills to his liking with the veto — even as a lame duck.

With the Iraq spending measure settled, lawmakers will begin in earnest this week to craft the fiscal 2008 budget in a series of House committee and subcommittee markups.

White House officials already are reminding members of the president’s power. Office of Management and Budget Director Rob Portman, a former Ohio Republican congressman, has said he would recommend Bush veto spending bills that exceed the White House’s requests.

“That startled a number of people,” one lobbyist said.

House Republicans are rounding up support for upholding a presidential veto of overly generous spending bills, and appear close to securing sufficient support.

While Democrats and Republicans generally differ on spending priorities, appropriations measures often enjoy bipartisan support. Members still want earmarks, although recent scandals have drawn unfavorable attention to the practice.

The White House and the Republican-led Congress had an annual battle over a program that funds the Office of Justice Programs, a budget line within the Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agency (CJS) bills. The justice program’s budget pays for law-enforcement officers in various cities largely through earmarks. The administration, though, routinely halves the request, leaving around $1 billion.

“It’s very difficult to pass the bill without these programs,” said one former Republican appropriations aide who is now a lobbyist. But it will be hard to fund the program at previous levels without going over the total CJS requested budget.

“They have a serious problem,” the lobbyist said.

Democrats do not appear overly worried about White House veto warnings. The labor and health spending measure, for example, is expected to be $10 billion more than the president’s request.

“Democrats aren’t likely to back down,” Warburg said, which could mean protracted budget fights in the months to come.
Adding to lobbyists’ anxiety is a process adopted by House appropriators that will leave most in the dark for the foreseeable future.

Democrats have promised more transparency — requiring earmarks be linked to their sponsors, for instance. A lobbying bill would also require lobbyists to report earmarks clients are seeking.

All that will have to wait, apparently. House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) has said the bill will be earmark-free until conference committee.

“People aren’t sure what the bills are going to look like,” Warburg said.

The House commitment means much of the initial lobbying will shift to the Senate, which is likely to identify earmarks sooner.

Perhaps of greater concern is that there are likely to be fewer targeted projects this year, given recent controversies.
“It’s going to be a tough year for earmarks,” one lobbyist said.

As the House committee wades into the spending debate, immigration reform will continue to dominate action on the Senate floor, with a possible vote later this week.

In a letter yesterday, a number of business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Information Technology Industry Council, the Business Software Alliance and the Business Roundtable, urged support for an amendment authored by Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas). The amendment would increase employers’ ability to identify the foreign workers they want over the current structure of the “merit-based” system now in the bill.

The amendment will “preserve the ability of U.S. employers to determine the critical skill sets needed for global competitiveness and innovation and will make the proposed H-1B reforms more effective,” the letter stated.

Committee members also are continuing to piece together the farm bill, which is up for renewal this year. Two House Agriculture subcommittees will mark up portions of the bill this week.

A farm worker rights group, Farmworker Justice, is holding a press conference today in support of a bill to require farms to report all the pesticides they use to local officials.

Federal laws require reporting of particularly toxic pesticides, defined as “restricted-use” pesticides.

The deputy director of Farmworker Justice, Shelley Davis, said the classification fails to cover about 90 percent of the chemicals used on farm fields that may have adverse health effects. A few states, such as California and Washington, have pesticide directories. But there is no federal standard that applies to chemicals not defined as restricted-use.

Davis said a registry could enable doctors to learn quickly to what a patient had been exposed, which would help to treat the symptoms.

Advocates are trying to get the reporting requirements, as well as a $22 million earmark to study the health effects of
pesticide exposure, added to the farm bill.

The news conference today will feature Froy Martinez, a resident of Caldwell, Idaho, who fell ill after working in an onion field that had mistakenly been sprayed the night before with three hazardous pesticides.

After working in the morning, Martinez became unconscious at night, he says, and was taken by ambulance to the emergency room, where he was diagnosed with acute pesticide poisoning.

Two years after exposure, he said, he still suffers from its effects. Martinez said that he has had high blood pressure, as well as difficulty breathing and walking, since the incident.

Farmworker Justice also wants long-term health effects to be included on pesticide labels, and additional research into the health effects exposure to pesticides could have.

The group’s priorities are outlined in a bill authored by Rep. Joe Baca (D-Calif.), the current chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which as a group is backing the bill.