Defying Congress, Bush Slashes Anti-Terror Bill

Defiantly breaking a budget truce with Congress, President Bush announced Tuesday that he would block more than $5 billion that lawmakers had approved for homeland security, global AIDS relief and other items. Since last year’s terrorist attacks, Bush has worked with both Republicans and Democrats to round up support for massive spending packages for the war on terrorism, recovery operations in New York and new domestic security measures.

At times in recent months he used veto threats to get his way, but in other instances he embraced bipartisan priorities.

Now the president’s stance is much more confrontational. At an economic forum in Waco, Texas, Bush vowed Tuesday to assert control over the federal budget through a rarely used executive power, akin to a veto, to block already designated spending.

But while the president struck a blow in the name of fiscal restraint, his decision to eliminate billions from a recently enacted anti-terrorism law drew immediate howls from congressional Democrats and private complaints from some Republicans.

Gone in a stroke were funds meant to aid Israel, bolster local firefighting forces and even replace antiquated election equipment in counties nationwide. Gone too may be a great deal of the comity Bush had counted on to help win congressional approval for some of his own legislative proposals.

Democrats chastised Bush. Rep. Martin Frost of Texas, the third-ranking Democrat in the House, charged that the president could be risking “homeland security and foreign policy stability.” Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), a fierce partisan, said: “It makes no sense to say we are at war and then block the bipartisan efforts of Congress to protect the American people.”

In coming weeks, the president’s shift on spending will undoubtedly complicate already difficult negotiations over the annual bills lawmakers must pass by year’s end to keep the government running.

Lawmakers from both parties, long accustomed to cutting bipartisan budget deals, are certain to seek to resurrect some of the spending that Bush said he would kill.

Some of it is money the president himself wants for aviation security, economic aid to Israel and humanitarian relief for the Palestinians, and global AIDS prevention.

Some is money that influential lawmakers want for law enforcement, defense and election reform, as well as more parochial concerns.

White House aides signaled that those lawmakers--Republican and Democrat alike--will have to reckon with a president unafraid to use maximum executive power.

Since taking office in January 2001, Bush has not used his veto pen. But describing the president’s action on Tuesday, Joshua Bolten, the White House deputy chief of staff, said: “This is about as close to a veto as there is.”

Karl Rove, Bush’s chief political advisor, said the president was not spoiling for a fight. “We’re not taking on Congress--any more than Congress took on the president,” Rove said.

At issue is a portion of a $29-billion anti-terrorism spending bill that both houses of Congress overwhelmingly approved late last month and Bush signed into law Aug. 2. Most of the spending was proposed by the administration for military operations and homeland security after the Sept. 11 attacks.

But $5.1 billion of it was added by Congress for various initiatives lawmakers deemed urgent. To activate those funds, the president had to agree with Congress and designate all of them for emergency use. On Tuesday, he said he would not do so, effectively killing those appropriations.

In its effect, Bush’s executive action is tantamount to a line-item veto. Congress, however, has no power to override Bush, as it could with a veto. Lawmakers who wish to pursue the spending proposals must start over.

Among the spending items that Bush nixed were:

* More than $700 million for military operations and maintenance and a defense emergency response fund;

* $480 million for the troubled Transportation Security Administration, which is struggling to tighten airport security with such measures as bomb-detection machines;

* $400 million for election reform;

* $273 million for the Coast Guard;

* $165 million for the FBI;

* $90 million to monitor the health of emergency personnel who responded to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon; and

* Millions more for programs such as flood prevention, national parks and even the Smithsonian Institution. Bush, in biting remarks, derided one portion of funding as meant for “a new facility for storing the government’s collection of bugs and worms.”

To be sure, members of Congress perennially stuff pet projects into emergency spending bills. Bush has sharply criticized this practice as “pork-barrel spending” but until now has been forced to accept much of it as the price of doing business in Washington.

“It’s a game of chicken,” said Forrest Maltzman, a political scientist at George Washington University. “Members of Congress try to use [spending bills] as a vehicle to get things through. And Bush is now calling their bluff.”

Times staff writer Edwin Chen in Waco, Texas, contributed to this report.