Bush on the Verge of Doing Something Spectacular?

John Fund has an excellent article entitled "Hold the Pork" published in the Opinion Journal section of the Wall Street Journal. The synopsis of the article, if you don't feel like reading the entire piece (a mistake, by the way, if you don't), is that the Democrats, in order to fulfill their undying hunger for all things pork, stuffed a ton of earmarks into the omnibus spending bill that President Bush can simply ignore the earmarks and direct the funds towards more useful areas, such as, oh, I don't know, funding the war. Here's an excerpt:

What Mr. Bush knows, and Congress doesn't want the taxpayers to know, is that the vast majority of the offending earmarks--the ones that aren't part of the actual budget law and were instead "air-dropped" into the committee report--aren't legally binding. A Dec. 18 legal analysis by the Congressional Research Service found that most of the committee reports have not been formally passed by both houses and "presented" to the President for signing, and thus have not become law. "President Bush could ignore the 90% of earmarks that never make it to the floor of the House or Senate for a vote," says Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, who has read the CRS report. "He doesn't need a line-item veto."

Federal agencies would still be obligated to spend the dollars appropriated by Congress. But they could use the money higher priorities that would benefit all taxpayers, rather than on favors for special interests or political donors. For example, the $700,000 for a bike trail in Minneapolis could be used to rebuild the collapsed bridge in that city and to strengthen others. In addition, under such an executive order, future earmarks would likely have to go through committee hearings and would receive much greater scrutiny and publicity than they do now.

Sure, this move would undoubtedly inflame the Libtards even more than ever, but President Bush needs to make this move for a few reasons. First, they will fight even harder during the next spending bill to stop funding the war that they have been trying to undermine for political reasons. Second, it would set an excellent precedent for Congress to stop earmarking everything imaginable. Third, it would help to undo some of the damage that was done by the increases in government under his watch. Of course, doing out of principal is reason all on its own. What will the Liberals do? How much crying could they possible do over this move? Even they wouldn't be stupid enough to go on TV to attack President Bush for putting a stop to a series of irresponsible and ethically questionable (at best) series of expenditures. Even assuming the Moonbats take full control of the party and try to use this as reason to pursue a failed impeachment proceeding, the effects would blow up in their face because the public wouldn't be so stupid as to not see the real underlying reason that they would only be pursuing this action because they were denied from gouging the taxpayers in outrageous spending provisions that serve as kickbacks to their donors. It should be a slam dunk and rank up there as one of the best moves that President Bush has done during his tenure.

-Caomhin