Can anyone now deny that President Bush’s $5.1 billion budget cut stunt was a political goof? Of course not. And now the president has to resort to transparent weaseling to try to recover. In response to ferocious criticism from the nation’s firefighters’ union (“Don’t lionize our 
fallen brothers in one breath, and then stab us in the back …”) the president today tried to explain why he’s cutting more than $300 million in funding for firefighters and ground zero rescue personnel. It’s Congress’s fault: “What [the firefighters] ought to be upset about is the fact that Congress tried to tie my hands. They said, ‘You’ve got to spend $5 billion or none of the $5 billion.'” The clear sense of that remark is that the president would have supported the money for firefighters. But Congress forced his hand by lumping it in with a lot of other spending.
Unfortunately, this contradicts what the president said a mere three days ago. Back on Tuesday the president said that along with axing the $5.1 billion he would ask Congress to send him another bill to reinstate funds for “truly pressing needs and priorities” which he said were $200 million for AIDS prevention and $250 million to be divided between aid for Israel and aid for the Palestinians. Those were the priorities the president did want to spend on. The money for firemen wasn’t one of them.
The whole budget cut stunt was just a snap decision to save the Economic Forum. They hadn’t thought it through. Now they’re in damage control. The president has to make stuff up. It’s not a pretty picture.
