Although Congress has not yet begun to consider any of the appropriations bills that will finance the federal government in FY 2009, the White House threatened to veto Democratic spending bills — even before any details were unveiled. With the flurry of veto threats late in his presidency, President Bush appears to be attempting to erase seven-plus years of reckless fiscal management of the federal government with token gestures that feign fiscal responsibility. Despite these recent actions, budget watchdogs say the Bush legacy on fiscal policy will be one of irresponsibility, inattention to detail, and futility. Earlier in 2008, OMB Director Jim Nussle sent a pre-emptive letter to the House and Senate Budget and Appropriations committees, warning that "appropriations bills that exceed the President's reasonable and responsible spending levels will be met with a veto." This pre-emptive action is quite a change from the majority of Bush's tenure. Until he vetoed the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act on July 19, 2006, Bush was approaching the record of Thomas Jefferson as the president who served the longest without issuing a single veto (he fell two years short). Even today, Bush has vetoed fewer bills than any president since Warren G. Harding, who served only two years.

But when the Democrats took control of Congress in 2007, Bush abruptly reversed course. According to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Bush issued a total of 28 veto threats during his first six years in office. Then, in 2007 alone, that number grew to 52, half of which were directed at congressional appropriations or authorization measures on the grounds that Congress was engaging in excessive spending.

During the years of his presidency when the GOP held control of Congress, Bush never saw fit to issue a veto threat against an appropriations bill on fiscal grounds. But on May 11, 2007, then-OMB Director Robert Portman announced a new White House legislative strategy, saying that Bush would veto "any appropriations bill that exceeds his request." During the course of the FY 2008 appropriations season, the House and Senate routinely approved spending bills larger than Bush had requested in the budget he submitted to Congress.

This sudden shift in White House strategy came, however, on the heels of years of approving larger increases in government spending than any president had approved since before the administration of Lyndon Johnson. The Cato Institute calculated that the annual growth of federal spending under Bush has risen 5.3 percent, compared to 4.6 percent during the Johnson years. The national debt under President Bush has increased by more than 60 percent, from under $6 trillion to just shy of $10 trillion.

The major factors accounting for this deterioration of the nation's fiscal position are well known and have been championed by Bush over the course of his presidency. The war in Iraq has cost approximately $525 billion in unanticipated spending. The 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts reduce federal revenues by about $200 billion a year. And Bush was also unwilling to veto some big ticket items sent to him when Republicans controlled Congress, including a 2002 farm bill that increased agricultural spending 76 percent over 1990s levels and the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill costing an additional $60 billion a year. All three of these bills were deficit-financed.

Comparing Bush to some of his predecessors also shows his support for large increases in spending, not the fiscal rectitude he portrays lately, as the Cato Institute has pointed out:

George W. Bush will likely leave office with a government spending burden higher (around 20%) than it was when he came to office (18.5%). That's the way things trended in his first six years. Presidents Reagan and Clinton, on the other hand, presided over drops in the spending burden by this measure.

The contrast between Bush's veto-borne rhetoric of responsibility and the reality of his record aside, more specific analysis shows his new strategy has not even been targeted effectively. Last year, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) looked at the funding levels of the veto-threatened appropriations bills for FY 2008 and compared those levels with inflation-adjusted figures from appropriations bills already passed by Republican-controlled Congresses and signed by Bush, from FY 2002 through FY 2006. What CBPP found is that the bills Bush said he would veto in 2008 cost less in 2008 than the corresponding bills had cost, on average, during 2002-2006. CBPP concluded the president's veto threats of appropriations bills had little to do with fiscal responsibility:

In short, the President will likely sign those appropriations bills that are more costly than in the past (after adjusting for inflation and population growth). Yet he is likely to veto — purportedly on fiscal grounds — those appropriations bills, such as the Labor-HHS-Education bill, whose costs are lower than the corresponding bills he signed in the past.

The facts behind Bush's fiscal record point to a president who not only squandered opportunities to fix the fiscal health of the country, but repeatedly made decisions and supported policies that helped that fiscal health to deteriorate further. Budget watchers note his attempts at such a late hour to stand firm against minor spending increases in discretionary spending bills also fall far short, both in timing and substance, of fixing his legacy on fiscal issues.