From Business Week Online, April 10, 2001

WASHINGTON WATCH
By Howard Gleckman

How Bush Blew the Budget
His mistakes were treating it like a business deal, not a political matter, and in thinking muscle was more important than compromise

George W. Bush has just learned a little lesson about the U.S. Senate. It's not the House of Representatives. Nor is it the Texas legislature. It is, instead, filled with some of the toughest pols in the country -- all with egos the size of the Lone Star State. Most of them think they should be President. After all, they could do as good a job as whoever is sitting in the Oval Office.

And right now, most of them know -- just know -- they could do a better job than the untested Bush. Nor will they be taken for granted. As Linda Loman said about Willy in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, "attention must be paid."

Bush never had a clue. In an effort to railroad his budget through Congress, the President thought he could roll Senate Democrats and moderate Republicans. After all, he figured, he could rely on 50 Republicans and Vice-President Dick Cheney to break ties. All he had to do was put enough heat on wavering Republicans and they would cave, Dubya believed.

NOT ENOUGH VOTES. Fat chance, and Bush paid a stiff price for his naivete. Days before he sent his budget blueprint up to Capitol Hill, the Senate rewrote it. His signature tax cut was slashed by 25%, and his efforts to hold spending increases to 4% this year were trashed. The Senate instead made room for 2001 spending hikes of more than 8%.

The Bushies put the best face they could on the defeat. Budget Director Mitchell Daniels insisted there was "sort of a 'boys will be boys' notion to this thing." But Hill GOP leaders knew better. Not only could Bush not get his $1.6 trillion tax cut through the Senate, he couldn't get any changes to a bipartisan $1.25 trillion version offered by John Breaux (D-La.). "We didn't have the votes," conceded a glum Senate Assistant Majority Leader Don Nickles (R-Ok.).

Three times, the GOP called on Cheney to break tie votes. And each time, to keep the budget process moving forward, Cheney & Co. made concessions. Result: The Senate ended up promising to spend more money without approving Bush's plan. It reserved $300 billion over the next 10 years for a Medicare drug benefit, double the $153 billion Bush proposed. It boosted Bush's farm budget by $58 billion and added funds for education, veterans' benefits, and health care. Altogether, the Senate budget blueprint called for $20 billion more in spending than Bush wanted for fiscal 2002.

After all that, Bush still lost the backing of two moderate Republicans - Jim Jeffords of Vermont and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. Both feared Bush's $1.6 trillion tax cut was too big and were talked into joining moderate Democrats in crafting a $1.25 trillion version. "Raw politics," complained Senator Bob Bennett (R-Utah). Actually, what beat Bush was not politics, but the absence thereof. Politics, says my dictionary, is the "science or art of government." Rather than seeking consensus or compromise, which is the essence of politics, Bush thought he could use muscle to get what he wanted.

TOO LATE. The tactic worked in the polarized House. But it failed in the Senate, done in by the likes of Democrat John Breaux of Louisiana, a man with a fine bayou appreciation of real politics. In January, Breaux warned Bush that the President didn't have the votes to jam Congress on his tax cut. And in the midst of last week's budget debate, Breaux looked at the brewing stalemate in the Senate, took note of Bush's stonewalling, and was disgusted. "Same old," he grumbled.

A few hours later, Breaux got Chafee and Jeffords, along with a handful of Democrats, to back his $1.25 trillion tax-cut target. And within 48 hours, the Senate passed a budget that looked a lot more like Breaux' than Bush's. Every Republican voted for it.

On Apr. 9, Bush sent the details of his own budget up to Capitol Hill. But it arrived 72 hours too late. The Senate had already scotched the tax-and-spending blueprint for its own version. If Bush doesn't want Washington to have another year of "same old," it's getting to be time for him to look up the meaning of the word "politics" in the dictionary.

Gleckman is a a senior correspondent in BusinessWeek's Washington bureau. Follow his views every Tuesday in Washington Watch, only on BW Online Edited by Douglas Harbrecht

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Alex