President Bush will say just about anything to prove that he is going to get serious about fiscal restraint in the federal budget, but he has yet to utter the four-letter word that would stop any big spender in their tracks: V-E-T-O. The president's rhetoric is a political necessity. Backing it up will be less palatable, but with the budget deficit scheduled to hit $427 billion this year, the President needs to show that he is serious about fiscal responsibility, and the veto is the way to do it.

In every State of the Union speech since getting elected, the President has sounded the alarm on federal spending, but he has always stopped short of getting tough on the uberhogs in Congress. In 2002, the President said that, “so long as Congress restrains spending and acts in a fiscally responsible way,” deficit spending would be limited. Later that year, he signed the bloated farm bill. In 2003, “the best way to address the deficit and move toward a balanced budget is to…show some spending discipline in Washington, D.C.,” and “by acting as good stewards of taxpayer dollars” as he said in 2004. Despite this tough rhetoric, 2003 brought us the budget busting Medicare prescription drug benefit. This year, attempting to reach across party lines, the president said that “America's prosperity requires restraining the spending appetite of the federal government. I welcome the bipartisan enthusiasm for spending discipline.”

Good words, but these are hollow pronouncements when they are not backed up by action. The reluctance to step on any of the big feet in Congress may be the safe political bet that keeps everyone singing Kumbaya around the camp fire, but it has been devastating to the federal government's bottom line.

This era of deficits brings tighter and tighter budgets, and the need to start using the “V” word is at an all-time high. Don't take my word for it: the President proved last congressional session that even the threat of the veto works pretty well. Last year, his administration created a line in the sand on transportation, promising that anything over $256 billion in road spending over the next six years would be vetoed. It was clear to Congress that the administration was serious, so this veto threat thankfully stalled the oversized transportation spending bill and the $9.7 billion in pork nuggets hiding throughout the legislation. (Note: The administration may have already reversed this threat by officially increasing their transportation number to $283 billion in the FY 06 budget that was requested on 2/6/05)

You have to wonder if perhaps the veto pen has run out of ink. Or maybe it's been tossed in some cobweb-filled drawer where no one can find it. According to the Senate Historian, the last president to serve a full term and not veto one piece of legislation was President Van Buren in 1837-1841.

The President has avoided the time-tested strategy of keeping Congress in line by throwing bad bills back at them and telling them to start from scratch. He has yet to veto a spending bill. But sharply worded messages to Congress, coupled with the sure knowledge that he will wield his veto power, would bring the sobering fiscal restraint now sorely lacking. If the President wants to cut the deficit in half and restore any fiscal sanity to the budget process, there's really no other solution.

Alongside all the porked up budget bills, Congress will be trying to finish an energy bill and a transportation bill among others. Both these bills will need a significant amount of scrutiny from budget hawks.

Our nation is carrying unsustainable levels of fiscal debt and the annual deficits continue to get bigger and bigger. Now, more than ever, we need the President to rummage around for his veto pen, fill it with fresh ink, and test it out on a few of the budget-busting bills that are sure to come out of Congress this session.