WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Senate on Thursday handed President Bush his first veto override -- authorizing $23 billion in new water projects.
The Senate voted to pass the bill 79-14, despite the president's objections.
Supporters said the projects authorized under the Water Resources Development Act are necessary to rebuild the Gulf Coast after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, restore the Everglades and Great Lakes fisheries and build flood-control projects nationwide.
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No senator spoke in favor of sustaining Bush's veto during Wednesday afternoon's debate. The bill has had overwhelming support on both sides of the aisle, said Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-Louisiana.
"I don't know why the president chose this bill to try to reassume the mantle of fiscal responsibility, but he picked the wrong bill," she said.
The measure will fund projects including the reconstruction of levees around New Orleans, Louisiana, and the closure of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet -- a man-made channel blamed for funneling Katrina's storm surge into the city's Lower 9th Ward and neighboring St. Bernard Parish.
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"Frankly, without it, our long-term recovery is really in jeopardy," she said.
In his veto message, Bush complained that Congress added about $8 billion in projects to the bill in conference committee after each house had passed its own version.
"American taxpayers should not be asked to support a pork-barrel system of federal authorization and funding where a project's merit is an afterthought," he said.
But supporters say the projects are necessary because Congress has gone more than seven years since its last major water resources bill passed.
Since the 2006 elections, Bush has vetoed three spending bills -- the water bill, a $35 billion expansion of the state-run, federally funded Children's Health Insurance Program and a $120 billion war-spending bill that would have called for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq in 2008.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/11/08/congress.water/index.html
It seems to me that Bush is trying to stone-wall congress, attempting to limit their power of the purse at the most inappropriate times.
Seems like he is a rather lame duck at this point.