Senator, Bush at odds over public works

By Chris Casteel

Published: August 12, 2007

WASHINGTON — On issues such as taxes, the war in Iraq and stem cell research, Sen. Jim Inhofe backs President Bush all the way. In fact, Inhofe, R-Tulsa, once said he agrees with the president "99 percent of the time.”

So what's the other 1 percent? The issue that led Inhofe to say the president was being "dishonest?”

Public works projects — roads, bridges, sewer systems, water supplies.

Inhofe and the president are locked in their second battle in two years over bills to authorize years of new spending on the nation's infrastructure.

In 2005, it was the highway bill. Now it's a bill for U.S. Army Corps of Engineers lake projects and help for municipal sewer systems across the country.

The House passed the bill just before Congress left for its August recess; the Senate is expected to pass it next month. The president has vowed to veto it. Inhofe has vowed that Congress will override the veto.

In an interview, Inhofe minced no words about the president's position.

"The president knows (a veto) is going to be overridden,” Inhofe said. "But now he can do something for his disappearing conservative base. I think it's dishonest.”

The dishonest part, Inhofe said, was the White House's suggestion that the bill spends $20 billion. The bill would only give congressional authorization for the projects, he said. The actual spending would have to be approved separately.

Responding to Inhofe's remarks, Andrea Wuebker, spokeswoman for the White House budget office, said the president has consistently asked Congress to limit actual and authorized spending.

Wuebker said it was true that the water projects bill did not appropriate money. But, she said, "We need to address fiscal irresponsibility in the form it's presented.”

White House spokesman Tony Snow last week said the water projects bill was "a classic case of what goes on in Washington. ... Only in Washington do you split the difference between $14 billion and $15 billion by raising it to $20 billion. And I think the president wanted to make a pretty strong point about fiscal discipline.”Inhofe is the top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee. Until Democrats took over Congress in January, he was the chairman of that panel, which wrote the Senate version of the highway bill and the water projects bill.

In recent debate on the Water Resources Development Act and on the highway bill two years ago, Inhofe repeatedly defended spending on public works.

"I am coming from a conservative perspective,” he said in a speech two weeks ago on the Senate floor, adding that he had been ranked as the most conservative senator by the American Conservative Union.

"Yet I am saying to you there are two things we ought to be spending money on in this country: One is national defense and the other is infrastructure.

"We have a crisis in our infrastructure. The big bill on transportation infrastructure we passed (in 2005) is going to do nothing more than maintain what we have now. And it is anticipated in 20 years we will increase our traffic by 50 percent. What are we going to do?”

Inhofe clashed with the president on that highway bill. Inhofe wanted a $318 billion bill. Bush at first said he would veto anything over $256 billion, though he ultimately accepted $286 billion.

"This is a bill that is a matter of life and death,” Inhofe said of the legislation, during one of his lengthy speeches warning about the nation's crumbling roads and bridges.

For his part, Inhofe secured more than $200 million combined for the I-40 Crosstown bridge project in Oklahoma City and the widening of I-44 in Tulsa. He also got more money dedicated annually for the state's transportation needs, including bridges.

Inhofe isn't the only conservative who backed the highway bill. It passed overwhelmingly in both houses.

And the water projects bill he has spent years working on was approved easily in the House and is expected to have strong bipartisan support in the Senate next month.

Inhofe contends the White House's opposition to the water resources bill is political, while critics of the bill contend the projects in the bill were chosen by lawmakers looking for political gains back home.

In an interview, Inhofe said the White House should wait to voice objections to projects that actually make it into spending bills.

The bill, he said, includes many projects that met certain criteria, but not all of them should ultimately be funded. What the bill does, though, he said, is establish the authority of the congressional committees with expertise — rather than the appropriators, those who allocate the money — to determine which water and sewer projects make the grade.

That, Inhofe said, is the conservative approach.

He told the Senate, "During the August recess, you are going to hear this person, who is rated the most conservative member of this body, out talking all over the nation why this is the conservative approach to logically authorize these projects and then determine which ones are worthwhile.”

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